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U.S. NEWS Monday 20 January 2020
Clones help famous

elm tree named Herbie

live on, for now

By DAVID SHARP The goal is to create many
YARMOUTH, Maine (AP) more — hundreds of thou-
— A massive elm tree sands more, he said.
nicknamed Herbie is long "Herbie is our hope for the
gone, but it is going to live future," Hansel said.
on, thanks to cloned trees Hansel also devoted him-
that are being made avail- self to preserving elm trees
able to the public. after they were wiped out
At 110 feet and more than by Dutch elm disease.
200 years, Herbie was the Elm trees once lined streets
tallest and oldest elm in in towns from coast to
New England and survived coast. But all that changed
14 bouts of Dutch elm dis- with startling speed be-
ease because of the de- cause of the Dutch elm
votion of his centenarian fungus, spread by bark
caretaker, Frank Knight, beetles, beginning in Ohio
the late tree warden of in the 1930s. Once afflict-
Yarmouth, Maine. ed, elms faced a swift and
The duo became famous an all-but-certain death. In this Jan. 14, 2010 file photo, an arborist in a cherry picker cuts
after Knight spent half of Working with the Univer- limbs from a massive elm tree, nicknamed Herbie, in Yarmouth,
his life caring for the tree, sity of Wisconsin, Hansel Maine.
which he referred to as "an helped to create and dis- Associated Press
old friend." Knight realized tribute about 300,000 "Lib-
he couldn't save the town's erty" elms that were based
elms as they succumbed on trees from the Midwest.
by the hundreds to Dutch Those trees were named
elm disease. So he focused for Boston's "Liberty Tree," a
his efforts on one of them: giant elm.
Herbie. Hansel shifted his effort to
Over five decades, Knight Herbie in hopes of creat-
oversaw selective pruning ing a new standard bearer
of Herbie's diseased limbs, that's better suited to the
and applications of insec- Northeast.
ticides and fungicides. The It's been a painstaking pro-
pair became well known, cess.
both in Yarmouth and be- Researchers began clip-
yond, thanks to internation- ping leaves from Herbie
al news coverage. years before his demise.
The tree was cut down Jan. Researchers planted about
19, 2010, as the 101-year- 5,000 of clippings in pots
old Knight looked on. before finally getting a sin-
Knight died two years later. gle tree that took root.
But before Herbie was From that, there are now
chopped down, the Elm 1,500 trees. That represents
Research Institute in New a critical mass to begin cre-
Hampshire worked with ating them in even larger
Knight to collect some cut- numbers.
tings from Herbie to pre- "I love the idea," said Jan
serve the tree's legacy with Ames Santerre, urban for-
clones. estry program coordina-
The hope is that Herbie's tor for the Maine Forest
descendants will have Service. "People are inter-
some resistance to Dutch ested in big trees in gen-
elm disease. But that re- eral, but Herbie captivated
mains to be seen. people's attention. It was
"Like many cancer pa- a beautiful tree, and the
tients, he was a survivor. idea that someone could
We wanted to make every r e-create that in their yard
effort to reproduce Herbie or in their community is a
hoping his clones would very appealing thing to
prove equally resistant to do," she said.
Dutch elm disease," said The National Arboretum
John Hansel, the 95-year- also took an interest in Her-
old founder of the Elm Re- bie and took some clip-
search Institut based in pings, as well. Some of
Keene, New Hampshire. those seedlings were plant-
The yearslong effort has ed in Maine, but they didn't
created 1,500 mini Herbies. survive, Santerre said.q