Slippery Elm & American Elm

Ulmus rubra Muhl., Ulmus americana L.

Ulmaceae

Slippery Elm leaves and twigs, showing leaf venation, texture, arrangement on the branch, Photo credit: D. Botcherby 2022

Names and Their Meanings

Slippery Elm - Ulmus rubra

Kanienʼkéha

akará:tsi

Anishinaabemowin

ozhaashigob

French

Orme rouge

American Elm - Ulmus Americana

Kanienʼkéha

akará:tsi'kowa

Anishinaabemowin

aniib, niip

French

Orme d'Amérique

John Jamieson using an Elm bark toboggan to transport things, Six Nations of the Grand River, 1912, Photo credit: Frederick Wilkerson Waugh, Canadian Museum of History Archives and Collections

Model of a Haudenosaunee Elm Bark Longhouse, 1915, Photo/ model credit: Frederick Wilkerson Waugh, Canadian Museum of History Archives and Collections

Mrs. David Jack and her daughter grinding corn grains with two pestles and a mortar, Six Nations of the Grand River, 1912. Sometimes pestles/ corn pounders were made of American/ White Elm, while the mortars were often made of Oak wood. Photo credit: Frederick Wilkerson Waugh, Canadian Museum of History Archives and Collections

Slippery Elm leaves and twigs, showing leaf venation, texture, arrangement on the branch, Photo credit: D. Botcherby 2022

Slippery Elm

Description

Tehehanteh Miller, Six Nations knowledge-holder and linguistic and cultural advisory on this project, relayed that in the time of prophecy Great White Elm refers to the time when the Chiefs cannot hold it all together; the oral tradition teaches that heads of the chiefs will roll, and it's the responsibility of the people to hold the peace tree from falling down. He noted that many people believe we are in that time right now.

Slippery Elm is a long-lived tree that grows up to 65-70 feet tall, and can also grow very wide. The bark is a light grey-brown coloration on the flattened, straight ridges, with furrows in between that can be reddish-brown, and a reddish-brown heartwood. The inner bark becomes mucilaginous – slick and slippery – when mixed with water, which is the reason for this elm’s name. Twigs are hairy, and contain the mucilaginous qualities that quench thirst when chewed. Slippery elm prefers sun moist loam or clay loam soils, but can also tolerate drier, calcareous soils. It grows in deciduous to mixed-wood forests, along floodplains, stream banks, uplands, and lower slope to bottom wooded areas. Slippery elm also reproduces vegetatively by layering, sprouting from stumps and root crowns, and spreading by rhizomes. These trees are intermediately shade tolerant, and form part of the sub-canopy in mid-successional forests.