Sean Houtman wrote:

Rock Elm isn't common in South Dakota, as I understand is the
location
you are growing them. The trees need to be about 20 years old to
flower,
and like other spring flowering elms, if the winter is too cold, or
if
there is a cold snap at the wrong time, you may not get seeds.

Sean

AP writes back:

No Sean, this is not a error of the author. Both you and
Monique have to get used to the idea that AP can be
correct more than half the time.

I have contacted Herbariums and they too have researched or observed
no seeds. These are herbariums smack in the middle of the best places
where Rock Elm grows.

Now if you, Sean looks back at my posts to the sci.bio.botany
newsgroup of several years ago, I posted that a Virginia Tech website
that pictures Rock Elm that its seeds are not Rock Elm but look to be
Siberian Elm seeds. Another sci.bio.botany regular
Peter van ?? (name) who used to write the FAQ also
was questioning those seeds.

Well, putting 2 and 2 together, Sean. If the world does not have any
more Rock Elms producing Rock Elm seed, then Virginia Tech who wants
to show a picture of Rock Elm seed, cannot show the seed, and so they
have Siberian seed on display.

Make sense Sean?

So the world botany community ought to get off its
noninertia and go into some action mode. Do we want
to lose the Rock Elm species? We can save it for the
future in which we combat the Dutch Elm Disease.

Apparently, Dutch Elm affects seed production in Rock
Elm that disallows seed formation. Dutch Elm affects
American elm, but not to the extreme point that American elm can still
produce seeds and thus giving
new trees. With Rock Elm, we have ceased having new
trees since perhaps year 1999.

So unless we go into action, we risk extinction of Rock Elm.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies