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.