Finding a nightmare on Elm streets

When I started walking Loveland’s streets named for trees according to a 1970 municipal ordinance, I absolutely did not anticipate encountering “A Nightmare on Elm Street!” And yet, the elms’ names and their avenues, courts, drives, places and streets are flirting with that nightmare thing.

The Elm Family — Ulmaceae — now includes just three tree groups: elms, planetrees and zelkovas. Together they add up to as few as 14 or as many as 40-50 species. The difference depends on which source you consult.

And thus begins the nightmare.

Just as information sources cite different numbers of species they also use different names. The tree with the Latin (scientific) name Ulmus americana goes by the American (common) names American

elm and white elm. Likewise, the tree with the Latin name Ulmus glabra goes by the American names Scotch elm, Scot’s elm and wych elm.

This would seem to validate the academic argument that Latin names are superior to American names, but the argument ignores the previously stated fact that different experts recognize more or less species and each with its own name.

Preparing to walk the tree streets named for elms to learn if any elms actually grow there, I discovered Loveland sort of has nine streets named for elms including one avenue, three courts, four drives and one place. I say “sort of” because after I walked most of them I discovered two of them are within the urban residential area of Loveland but are technically outside city limits.

And the nightmare grows.

I was particularly enthusiastic about walking both Slippery Elm Court and Slippery Elm Place because as a young boy I got interested in trees and slippery elm was the first tree I identified on my own.

Unfortunately, in a combined 10 minutes of walking the combined threetenths of a mile for the two streets I found no elms of any kind.

Even though Spring Elm Drive appears on some Loveland street maps, it does not actually exist. Apparently, it was surveyed and mapped but the site is an empty lot.

And the nightmare grows.

I walked the four-tenths of a mile of Scotch Elm Drive in about 10 minutes and found one Siberian elm. In the same neighborhood I found three Siberian elms in 26 minutes walking the mile and a quarter of White Elm

Court and White Elm Drive. I found three more Siberian elms plus a curious tree in a backyard.

It looked as if it could be a white elm, so I stood there for a bit trying to identify it from the street while looking over the roof of the house. Then I noticed an elderly lady staring at me from the front porch of a neighbor’s house.

When she saw me look at her, she dashed into her house and locked the screen door. When I started walking again, I looked her way to see her quickly hide behind the door’s wall then slowly peek around to see what I was up to. When we made eye contact, she slammed the inside door.

Suddenly, I felt like the Freddy Krueger in my own nightmare on White Elm Drive.

I decided not to carry a binocular to check trees in people’s backyards!