Why does getting Elements from an XDocument result in null?

Question

Can anyone explain to me why xml1.Element("title") correctly equals "<title>Customers Main333</title>" but xml2.Element("title") surprisingly equals null, i.e. why do I have to get the XML document as an element instead of a document in order to pull elements out of it?

var xml1 = XElement.Load(@"C:\\test\\smartForm-customersMain.xml");
var xml2 = XDocument.Load(@"C:\\test\\smartForm-customersMain.xml");

string title1 = xml1.Element("title").Value;
string title2 = xml2.Element("title").Value;

XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<smartForm idCode="customersMain">
    <title>Customers Main333</title> 
    <description>Generic customer form.</description>
    <area idCode="generalData" title="General Data">
        <column>
            <group>
                <field idCode="anrede">
                    <label>Anrede</label>
                </field>
                <field idCode="firstName">
                    <label>First Name</label>
                </field>
                <field idCode="lastName">
                    <label>Last Name</label>
                </field>
            </group>
        </column>
    </area>
    <area idCode="address" title="Address">
        <column>
            <group>
                <field idCode="street">
                    <label>Street</label>
                </field>
                <field idCode="location">
                    <label>Location</label>
                </field>
                <field idCode="zipCode">
                    <label>Zip Code</label>
                </field>
            </group>
        </column>
    </area>
</smartForm>

Answer 1

The XDocument represents the whole document, not the root node. Use Root to get the root element.

var title = xml2.Root.Element("title").Value; 

should work.

Answer 2

This is because XDocument has an outermost layer that requires you to drill past to get to the elements. An XElement targets the actual element itself.