In our area here in SW Michigan Box Elders grow like weeds-disturbed or undisturbed alike. They can survive in a wide range of soils/soil conditions. When the soil ph ranges between 5-5.5 they grow their best, but can tolerate ph as high as 7. They are very common here and most consider them a weed. Their branches are brittle and become wind damaged easily. As they get older they drop a lot of small dead branches. They attract a lot of 'Box Elder Bugs' (Boisea trivittatus) that seem able to get into even the tightest built home. For most this is the biggest negative when it comes to having them. My Grandma use to tap them for their sap to mix with maple tree sap to make syrup from. You can not taste the difference. If you find one that has been allowed to grow undisturbed out in a field with no other trees near they have a very rustic look about them-almost artistic with their broken and fallen limbs hanging down combining with their natural shape when viewed from afar. Even this "dandelion" has its beauty! As most have said they survived pre-man and will probably survive post-man (not to be confused with your letter carrier).

You might have better luck in getting replies by posting on a forum in your part of the country. I certainly hope you get some answers after all this time.

If you like nasturtiums - I've found GE to be fairly easy to get rid of since adopting the following method. A 3 year (so far) programme of digging out the roots in heavily infested areas and planting lots of nasturtiums seems to have worked a treat. In a few places (fences, hedges around the roots of established plants that you don't want to lose)) it wasn't really possible to dig out the roots effectively, so I cleared what I could and sowed nasturtium seeds. The following year the GE doesn't seem to come back wherever the nasturtiums have done well. The only place I really still have it now is under a hedge/fence that is almost always in deep shade. The GE itself struggles there and the nasturtiums don't do well at all. But I keep putting seeds in and even that seems to be having an effect. To me it seems much better, cheaper and easier to plant an attractive annual that deters the GE, than messing about with weedkiller. I did the latter for a couple of years and got little return except frustration!

Yep, I gather that a good diversity of flora is an indicator of age. I was about to moan about the lack of diversity in ours - true the trees are poplar, hawthorn, elder and oak...but we seem to have quite a large number of herbaceous flora (weedy though) - a big selection of umbellifers, lots of labiatacae (sp?) silene, hemp agrimony, sweet flag, willowherbs (3 types) bluebells, water avens and herb bennet gallium, stellaria , burdock, artemisia, chamomile...and thousands of felicitous snowdrops thanks to Heyrick Greatorex, who planted his famous doubles all round the hedges and verges. As an inveterate meddler, I have reined myself in considerably but even so, I have been adding quite a few US woodlanders such as mertensia and stylophorum, as well as plundering the whole area for seeds. desperate to grow peucedanum palustre for the swallowtails and have finally managed to source plugs for next Febnuary since seeds, which must be fresh, are impossible to find. I do have an image in my head which, if it comes off, could be really quite iconic with no resemblance to traditional shade/woodland gardens with neat clumps of hosta and the like - I am seeing tiny ground huggers (primulas, celandines, wood anemones, extending in layers through bulbs and aqulegias, lunaria, ranunculous, mertensias, astrantias as the season progresses, ending with moor grass, angelicas, eupatoriums, and wood asters by the end of the summer - along with native grasses and (no doubt) weeds - terribly vain but still, a chance to create a small, temporary, legend. Chalara is running amok in Norfolk - how about Cornwall?