The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1946-12-12
Seek Means To Protect
200 Year Old Elm Tree

nings of Bluffton, and preservation
of the downtown landmark is dictat-
ed by the fact that it is the towns
only link with the days when this part
of Ohio still was virgin wilderness,
awaiting the coming of the white
man.
Estimates have placed the age af
the tree at more than 200 years and
from its lofty spread it has watched
the transition of undeveloped wood
lands into a pioneer town that later
was to grow into a bustling industrial
center.
Full Grown In SOS
The late Taylor Mumma, father of
Ray and Carl Mumma, whose memory
went back to the days when Indians
still roamed these parts, said that as
far as he could recall the tree had
been its present size.
Born in 1850 at Rockport, Mumma
came to Bluffton at the age of five,
33 years after founding of the settle
ment of Shannon, later to be known
by the towns present name.
Davy tree surgeons who have in
spected the stately old Elm rated it
an unusual one of its type, because
the spread of branches starts so high
in the air. The lower limbs of the tree
are a good Is feet from the ground,
circumstance that may have been
due to a thick growth of wilderness
surrounding the tree at lower level
in its early days.
Blight Came In 1880
From 1880, when the Dutch elm
blight first appeared in Ohio to 1943
the pestilence had contaminated Co.,
638 elms in the state. These were
valued at one and one-half million
dollars.
Shock troops of the blight are a
host of plague-carrying beetles, and
the disease has spread almost tenfold
in the last two years, according to
estimates.
The plague is most prevalent in
New Jersey, which up to 1943 had
$4,000 blighted trees; New York, 12,-
204; Connecticut, 1895.
The disease has appeared in Yer
mont and Kentucky within the last
year, and in Virginia and Delaware
within the last two years. Other
states which have been invaded in
cluded: Massachusetts, Maryland, O.
hio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and
Indiana. 1t also popped up last year
for the first time in Canada.
Elm Trees Are Valuable
Only two states have reckoned the
value of their elms at less than a
million dollars. They are Nevada,
whose elm trees are worth SAL, 900
and Delaware, where they are valued
at $225,000. Massachusetts has the
greatest crop of elms and calculates
their value at $96,000,000. Michigan's
elms are valued at $50, 100000. Even
New Mexico has $3,000,000 of the
trees.
The elms are valuable to the
country CHIEFLY as ornamental shade
trees. But commercially elm wood is
used for keels and bilge-planks, the
blocks and dead-eyes of rigging,
ships pumps, coffins, wheels, furni-
ture, carved and turned articles and
for general carpenters work. The
wood is remarkably durable under
water. 1t has considerable transverse
strength and does not crack when
properly seasoned.
Responsible for the propagation of
the Dutch elm blight here are two
species of bark beetles; one is
native of North America and the
other a refugee from Europe. The
native beetle is known as Hylurgop-
mus rufipes while the foreign bug is
called the smaller European bark
beetle or Scolytus multisriatus.
These pests carry the Dutch elm
disease fungus from infected elms to
recently felled trees or to the storm
damaged branches of healthy elms.
They bore through the bark of this
lately deceased or waning wood and
in the outer surface of the wood they
hack out narrow galleries in which
thair aUuc aro laid
Spreads Rapidly Through Tree
Once the deadly fungus has been
introduced into the tree its budding
spores soon spread through the vas
cular system 10 the other parts of the
elm. A tree can become completely in
tested with spores in as little time as
two weeks, especially if it is a rapid
ly-growing tree.
The smaller European bark beet
lie, having jumped the Atlantic, is
more aggressive than the native bug
and also attacks undamaged healthy
trees. 1t feeds at the crotches of the
small branches and thus injects the
fungus into the trees vascular sys-
tenn.
Attempts to check the disease,
therefore, are directed toward the
control of the bark beetles. Santa
tion against them includes the prun-
ing of all storm-damaged limbs from
healthy elms, the cutting and burn
ing of all fungus-infested trees and
the spraying with depellents of all
trees which are threatened by the