Slippery Elm

Slippery elm is a medium-sized deciduous tree of eastern North America, found from south-eastern North Dakota to Maine and southern Quebec and south to northern Florida and eastern Texas, mostly on moist uplands. It usually grows twelve to nineteen metres tall, with a spreading crown, reddish-brown heartwood and broad leaves that are rough above and velvety beneath; its downy twigs, hairy reddish buds and slimy red inner bark set it apart from the American elm. Both its English names come from the tree itself: red elm from the colour of the heartwood, slippery elm from the mucilage in the inner bark. Native Americans ate that bark raw or boiled, and it has long been taken as a demulcent for sore throats and upset stomachs and laid on the skin for rashes. Grieve, noting that it was an official drug of the United States Pharmacopoeia, commends it as a gruel for infants and invalids and above all as a poultice for wounds, boils and burns. The timber, of little commercial worth, has gone into fence posts, wagon-wheel hubs and archery bows. Cunningham makes it a feminine herb of Saturn and air whose power is to halt gossip: burn it and throw a knotted yellow cord into the fire, and talk against you will stop.