Slippery Elm: An Old-Time Survival Food And Medicine

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And if that doesn't sell you on the virtues of slippery elm, bear in mind that seasoned wood from the tree is especially hard and tough and wears well. For this reason, back when our nation lived much closer to the land, it was widely sought out for the construction of door sills, wagon wheel hubs, and other such "high stress" items.

Botanists sometimes make quite a distinction between Ulmus fulva and Ulmus rubra. . . but most farmers and outdoorsmen treat the two as variants of the same tree. (All slippery elms—both the lighter brown and the red varieties—are very similar and are frequently called "red elm" by native woodsmen. It takes a good eye to note the differences between cross sections of fulva and rubra bark and hard support wood.)

Individual specimens of slippery elm may grow to a height of seventy or eighty feet on moist, deep, alluvial soil . . . but they never have the noble, vaulting vase shape of the taller American elm. And when standing out in the open by themselves, Ulmus fulva and Ulmus rubra generally take an even lower and many-branched form.

Slippery elm grows in lowlands and along water from Quebec west to North Dakota and south to Florida and Texas. Its leaves are larger than the leaves of the American elm, sometimes reach a length of six inches, are a dull and dark green in color, and are rather coarse and rough on both sides. The buds of the leaves are covered with a yellow-tinted wool in the spring, and the winter buds are brown, dark, and hairy. The tree's seeds are round, flattened, and surrounded by a thin wing about half an inch in diameter. The seeds ripen and fall when the slippery elm's leaves are about half grown.

The outer bark of the slippery elm is reddish brown, deeply furrowed, and quite rough. It can be harvested any time of the year but peels from the tree most easily in the spring (when the sap is running). The juicy inner bark may then be pulled from the outer with little difficulty. Spread the cambium bark out on newspapers in a warm, dry room. Once it has dried, it may be stored (I like to keep mine in sealed glass jars) and ground for use as desired.

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