Elm forest, west of Minneapolis   Lee E. Frelich   Jul 28, 2004 10:14 PDT  ENTS: Yesterday I visited a privately-owned forest of American elm, red elm and rock elm west of Minneapolis. I had never seen such a thing before. The main canopy is 90 feet high with trees 100-150 years old and 3-7' cbh. There is also regeneration in the seedling and sapling size classes. Dutch elm disease has been there for 20 years, yet most of the old elms are still alive, even though there is several hundred acres of contiguous elm. A few have gotten Dutch elm disease and had it for several years and then recovered. There are some hackberry and basswood trees mixed in with the elms. This forest is just a few miles beyond the range limit of sugar maple, and the elms, hackberry and basswood have filled the maple's niche. There are areas where most of the elms are rock elm. Previously I had seen a few scattered rock elm, but never a whole stand of it. The site also has bur oak savanna, dwarf bur oak savanna on gravel eskers, prairie, marshes, and some lowland cottonwood forest with trees up to 25' cbh, which were already large trees on a photograph taken in 1896. Cottonwood must live longer than we normally suppose. During the Mid 1800s the area was slated to be Minnesota's capital. Of course plans to build the capitol there were abandoned due to the Sioux Indian wars, and the capitol building was eventually built in Pig's Eye (renamed St.Paul, since Pig's Eye is not a suitable name for a state's Capital city). All of the trees in the area have the growth form you would expect for an area at the climatic limits for tree growth, with extremely cold winters, hot summers, frequent high winds, tornadoes and lots of lightning. Most older trees have lightning scars, and most apparently die from blowing down after rot initiated by lightning scars. Before I visited this site I thought Minneapolis had an extreme climate. Lee Re: RE: Elm forest   Jess Riddle   Aug 06, 2004 05:21 PDT  Thanks for the description of the fascinating site. Do you now what factors in addition to the position relative to the range of sugar maple have contributed to producing the unusual canopy composition? Do topography and soil characteristics appear to explain the unusual concentrations of some species. Also, what other species occur in the understory and herbaceous layer? Most of the sites where I've seen red elm growing in near the edge of the southern Appalachians have rich, circum-neutral soils with unusually high calcium content. Hence, in this area, black walnut, red mulberry, and paw paw are common associates. As far as I know, rock elm's range is no where near this area, so I can't imagine the sites the species typically occupies. Jess Riddle Re: RE: Elm forest   Lee E. Frelich   Aug 06, 2004 08:13 PDT  Jess: This site has pH 7.0, black silt, 4-6 feet deep. Most soils at the edge of the prairie have a lot of calcium, since wind blown silt comes in from the Dakotas and Nebraska, which have high pH calcium rich soils. Deposition of this silt has probably been going on for thousands of years, and continues today. The silt holds a lot of water, so it allows development of a rich forest even though there is nothing but grass for the next thousand miles to the west. Some of the forest is on peninsulas and isthmuses between lakes, so it had fewer fires than the surrounding area, thus allowing forests to develop. The bur oak savannas are all on the south shores of the lakes, where fires would have had an unrestricted sweep before settlement. There are quite a few nice looking black walnut in the area, even though the range map for black walnut shows the edge of the range about 40 miles south of this forest. None of them are more than 100 years old, so they must have been brought in by farmers. Red mulberry does not occur in the area, since winters are too cold, and they would die back to the ground almost every year (in the relative banana-belt climate of Minneapolis, 90 miles further east, red mulberry can live 15-20 years between killing freezes of -30). Paw paw wouldn't have the slightest chance of surviving in the area. The understory on the peninsulas is dominated by wood nettle 6 feet tall, with about 50 plants per square meter. In fact we got lost in the nettle for an hour or so, since it was slightly higher than eye height and there was no way to tell where we were going. We each got several thousand nettle stings, but that's typical for a hike in a southern MN forest. Blue cohosh, spring beauty, Dutchman's breeches, yellow violets, and sweet cicely are all very common. There is a lot of elm, hackberry, basswood, and ironwood in the sapling layer. There are also seven species of woodpeckers, bald eagles, and pelicans in the area, and millions of mosquitoes of the species that carry West Nile virus, cases of which are frequent in the area during July and August. Lee Elm/ Oak Savannah Forest   Edward Frank   Mar 01, 2007 15:23 PST  Lee, Several days ago you made the comment that you had been trying to get The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota to work toward preserving an unusual elm forest/dry burr oak savannah forest west of Minneapolis. This is the one you described here: http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/minnesota/elm_forest.htm right? Is there anything I can do, or that ENTS could do to prod them or other groups toward protecting this unusual patch of woods? Write letters? Any suggestions? Ed Frank Re: Elm/ Oak Savannah Forest   Lee Frelich   Mar 01, 2007 18:55 PST  Ed: Yes, that is the forest. As far as I have been able to determine, it contains the only known rock elm forest, as well as very rare oak savanna. It might just help if ENTS wrote a letter stating how important it is to protect the only known example of that forest type, which could be signed by you, Will, Bob and other interested ENTS. Maybe that is something we could do at the meeting at Cook Forest. Do we have official ENTS stationery? Lee   Home