TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan—For perhaps four centuries, the gigantic American elm in George and Sandra Svec's cornfield has dodged every bullet nature and humans have fired its way.
But time is apparently running out on the tree, which the conservation group American Forests has declared the biggest of its kind in the United States.
The tree, which stands 112 feet high and measures 23.5 feet around before dividing into two dozen trunks, has Dutch elm disease and is dying fast, a scientist said Thursday.
"I could have cried when I saw what was happening, "said Jay Stipes, professor of plant pathology at Virginia Tech and a Dutch elm disease specialist.
He inspected the tree, near Buckley, about 20 miles south of Traverse City, during a July vacation trip to northern Michigan. It probably won't live longer than another year, he said.
A fungicide has been developed to inoculate elms from the disease. But in this case, it's probably too far advanced to make a difference, Stipes said.
"That's very sad," said Deborah Gangloff, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based American Forests, which placed the tree on its "national champion" list in 1997. There are 867 trees on the list, she said, including 51 in Michigan.
But, she said, that the tree has the illness is hardly surprising, given the devastation Dutch elm disease has wreaked since the 1950s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates 60 percent of mature elms in urban settings have perished, Stipes said.
The disease is a fungus that clogs tissues through which water flows, Stipes said. The tree eventually dies of thirst.
Symptoms include yellowing and drooping leaves and streaking and discoloration of wood.
The fungus is spread by a beetle. Larger elms that manage to avoid it are usually isolated from others of their species, Stipes said.
Although the Buckley elm stands alone in the cornfield and is visible from afar, Stipes said other "sick and dying" elms are close enough to have infected the champion.
He said it was "almost miraculous" that the Buckley elm avoided the disease as long as it did. Stipes and others have estimated the tree's age at 300-400 years.
That's not the only good luck the tree has enjoyed. Neither lightning nor the region's strong winds have felled it. Lumberjacks somehow overlooked it during the logging boom.