Problem is, there aren't many elm trees there any more. Old photos of Vermont and New Hampshire villages show streets lined with stately elms, noted for their graceful, vase-shaped canopies that provided shade and a certain grandeur to the townscape. In the forests, the elm also dominated its surroundings. Tom Wessells, in his book Reading the Forested Landscape , tells us that the elms growing in floodplain forests and along riverbanks often towered over 100 feet high. But Dutch Elm Disease, caused by a fungus carried by elm bark beetles, has wiped out most elm trees across the country.
Some old elms survive today, but more succumb each year.
Tuesday When European immigrants settled the New World, they brought lots of baggage with them. Among other things, they carried the chicken pox, against which Native American tribes had no immunity. Plants and animals can also be affected by imported epidemics. Take Dutch Elm Disease, for instance. In the early 1900's the elm bark beetle, a stowaway in a lumber shipment from the Netherlands, arrived in Massachusetts without a passport.