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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-999
Winged Elm
Ulmus alata
Winged Elm is a fast-growing, round-crowned shade tree named for the paired corky wings that form along its young stems. Its leaves can be eaten raw or cooked as a minor green, and its tough, split-resistant wood was traditionally worked into tool handles, wheel hubs and hockey sticks rather than burned, since that same resistance to splitting makes it poor firewood to process by hand. The fibrous inner bark was twisted into rope, once used to fasten the covers of cotton bales. It flowers and sets seed early in spring like most elms, but it's vulnerable to Dutch elm disease and elm phloem necrosis, so it grows best in numbers rather than relied on as a single specimen.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 6–9
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moist · Wet · Well-Drained
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 5–7
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 40–50 ft
- Mature spread
- 25–40 ft
- Plant spacing
- Not yet recorded
- Root type
- Not yet recorded
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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American Basswood
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American Beech
Fagus grandifolia
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American Chestnut
Castanea dentata
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American Elm
Ulmus americana
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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