Not really… when it’s green like this it actually doesn’t have a great smell. It’s not bad, but it’s pretty different from the oak and cedar/juniper varieties that we cut a lot of around here.
Once it’s dried, it doesn’t have much of a smell in my experience.
I'm not certain about this, but I’ve heard a couple explanations for the name “cedar elm” growing up here. One is that the color variation you see in the wood can be similar to cedar, the other is that because these elms grow in the same area(s) here that cedar trees are prevalent, they just get nicknamed.
To add to the confusion/story.., a lot of ash juniper (very invasive pest of a tree) grows here and chokes out the natural oak prairie and oak motts. People call these bushy ash juniper trees “cedar” because their foliage and smell are similar. The ash juniper is VERY invasive, and can drink incredible amounts of water, causing natural springs running to the surface from the aquifer and other seasonal water flows to dry up.
Cedar elms also have a very sprawling root system that can wreak havoc on plumbing, and they seek water aggressively. This may be another reason they got named “cedar elm.”
All this about why it’s named cedar elm is just my assumption, I don’t have it on authority, but it all kind of makes sense to me based on the rest of what I know … haha