Elm tree: Dutch elm disease wiped out almost all of the grand elms that once lined Vermont village streets, but in rural areas the tree keeps trying to come back. Typically the disease claims a tree as it approaches maturity, but the de facto quarantine of agricultural distances can allow individual elms to last for decades and grow to impressive size. That is particularly true of Addison County, where I live; elms grace many of the less-traveled roads of the "Great Plains of Vermont," a farming area flatter than most of the state because at one point in its geological history it was part of a larger Lake Champlain.