American Elm and Slippery Elm winter identification

Unique bark and leaf litter make it possible to identify these native elms during the winter months.

[AllSeasonsOutdoorsmen]

I have spent the last 4 days researching and watching videos about these exact species of elm trees and out of roughly 100 videos you are by far the best at describing and displaying the information

I am more great than you will ever know. Thank you so much kind sir!

[KevinsDisobedience]

Watching again a year later. You’re the best tree guy on YouTube that I know of. I’d love to take a walk with you. I’d learn more in one day than in a year of my own studies.

[Karathornton]

This is so thorough and such helpful information, thank you 🙏

[PopArt]

What a fantastic video chock-full of useful knowledge. One of the best ID vids I've ever seen! Thanks so much for the great lesson.

[EagleJim]

So the key to finding the elms is the bottom land. I'm a morel Hunter so I'm always looking for elms and when I find them they are, as you point out, located in bottom land. Very informative.

[seneca]

Thanks for the informative video! The American Elm and the Slippery Elm were two trees that I was not super familiar with. Now I will go out and try to find them in my woods! :)

[gregr]

Just watched this video once again ! Lol! This time, I really picked up on the marks the bark beetle leaves on the Slippery Elms. Also the dark chocolate color of the leaves and the silica giving it a rough texture! I live in a heavily wooded region and we have had so many standing dead slippery elms it is crazy! Entire sections of bark just fall off! I would love to spend some time looking at trees with you, to pick up on your vast knowledge ! Thanks once more!

[gregr]

Great video, I watch lots of tree ID videos and you included a lot of nice extras that others leave out ! I learned about Elm the hard way, trying to split it by hand . The worst kind was twisty and gnarly grain, almost impossible to split without a machine .Terrible to burn, its like lighting concrete on fire ! Then there is another Elm I have a lot of, I call it faux oak .It looks so much like red oak except the smell is not oak and the Rays are so prominent and definitive on the end grain, I can now pick that characteristic out a mile away . Also the wavy gravy growth rings . This Elm burns good, unlike the twisty grainy Elm .I ve also came across a 3 rd type Elm that has a very thick soft white pulpy wood between the bark and the heart wood .It almost is like cork texture on the outer white wood and the inner wood is very hard and tan color . It drives me crazy how much variance there is between them . One of them has a soft outer bark that you can sink your thumbnail into deeply, the other two have very hard bark . Trying to learn all I can about trees, I am in the woods daily cutting firewood & dropping dangerous rotted trees for friends . I would love to walk the acreage that I care for and pick your brain on the trees there .Thanks for your videos .Appreciated greatly !

[dccrens]

Just fopund your channel and love it! Thanks. There is one tree here in VA that I always get confused by that looks like the Elm (in the wintertime) and that is the Boxelder.

[GordeptC]

Excellent video! I'm going out tomorrow in area that's just cluttered with leaf litter. This helps so much now! Thank you, kindly sir!

[Lolzibarzor]

Great explanation and examples, my first time hunting Morels in NE Ohio i just want to find one at least haha, thank you for a proper video!

[FeralForaging]

Great video, friend. Very thorough! Much appreciated.

[wordswritteninred]

I am in park city, KY. I have literally, hundreds of elm saplings coming up all over my land. We just moved here. Not sure if they are slippery or American. But they have the strangest formation. Center “trunk”. With branches alternating on only two sides. So it is, in a sense, flat. If you understand what I am trying to describe. I don’t know what to do about them. Also, hundreds of black locust. I know they are great for fence posts, and even firewood. Just trying to figure out what to do with these elms!
What a great hint! Leafcolor! That might be how I can figure out these trees! THANK YOU!!!!

[freeradiorulo]

Love the channel! We have alot of hackberry here in Nebraska.

[fee]

I work for a tree service. When I seen the tree at the beginning before you talked about it, I was thinking to myself, “oh no, he’s about to call a Hackberry an Elm...”
I made this comment at this point and I have yet to watch the whole video. LOL. I’m eager to see what you have to say. And thank you for the video.

[carolyndewitt]

Very nice descriptions, t
hank you.

[mmjnice]

I live in Dayton Ohio and I'm so surprised how often I see Hackberry tree's even in the city. I'm so excited because Hackberry makes amazing bonsai tree's! I'm Particularly interested in finding hornbeam tree's around are are area. If you have any leads I'm interested. I haven't seen but two growing naturally in the Dayton Ohio area both in Englewood dam Park.

[kennylainhart]

I'm a local I know where you're at LoL beautiful place!!

[gregr]

A year older, hopefully wiser I have gained a lot more Elm info, I think! Lol! There is a type of tree in Southwest Pa here that just falls over dead, the wood is very light weight like balsa wood, upper branches can be punky! It has a very light colored papery bark on upper limbs and grey furrowed bark on main trunk near the base. When you split the wood the outer pulp will break off like a shell of a nut, with the inner live wood almost being stringy, harder. Like 2 different trees in the same tree. I had come to believe this tree was a balsam Poplar and yesterday I discovered that this lightweight tree is most definitely an American Elm, from the spring emerging buds the tree was loaded with when it fell over in high wind. It has the football shaped buds and the long stemmed pinkish flowers on the buds . Some of them still have the fuzzy covering, pussy willow esque ! So, looking in a very good book I purchased at an Audubon Store on Tree Identification, it matches every category for the American Elm.
Therefore, the other Elm Tree that I find a lot of here is most likely Slippery Elm, Red Elm! It is the tree that the wood resembles Red Oak in so many ways only the smell can discern it for me without having a leaf to identify. The Red Elm. Burns long, makes a lot of heat . Is a very hard wood indeed. The American Elm is the lightest weight wood I have ever encountered. An entire large branch can just snap like a twig . I believe I run across some hybrid elms also ! I read where many species of Elm were blended to try and achieve blight resistance .They seem to share characteristics of both trees in one . Thanks for your videos again, I learn more every time I rewatch them!

[twbishop]

here is a mnemonic:
@15:08 slippery elm, ulmus rubra, has rusty red-brown inner bark. (rubra means red in latin.) many people say "red elm" instead of "slippery elm".
american elm, ulmus americana, has stripped bark, white-ish and red-ish, comparable to an american flag.