Ulmus aff. 'Plotii'

Ulmus minor

Ulmus aff. 'Plotii', Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh, April 2015 (photo: Neil Roger)
Cultivar Ulmus aff. 'Plotii'
Origin England

Ulmus aff. 'Plotii', following Dr Max Coleman's findings about Plot Elm (2000)[1] and his paper on British elms (2002),[2] is the name given to Field Elms in the English Midlands that resemble but do not completely match the 'type'-tree, U. minor 'Plotii'.

Description

Elms of the aff. 'Plotii' group "are very close to Plot Elm and have a number of characteristics of the 'type', but their crowns are too broad and regular to match 'true Plot'."[3] They are characterised by some or all of the following diagnostic features: a mature crown of unilateral habit; short shoots that produce more than five leaves in a flush; subequal cordate leaf base; and red club-shaped glandular hairs on leaf surface.

Pests and diseases

The trees are susceptible to Dutch elm disease, but as they produce abundant root-suckers immature specimens probably survive in their areas of origin.

Cultivation

The tree was occasionally planted in parks and collections in the UK.

Hybrids

This group of elms is likely to hybridize in the wild both with wych elm and with U. minor.

Notable trees

Westonbirt specimen, before 1913

One of two late 19th-century specimens in Westonbirt Arboretum, mature by 1912 when Augustine Henry photographed it for his Trees of Great Britain & Ireland, was said by Henry John Elwes to be the largest-known tree of its kind in Britain.[4] It was 88 feet high and 8.1 feet in girth in 1921.[5]

Two aff. 'Plotii' survive (2014) in the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.[6]

A Plot-type elm with leaves that match the diagnostic photographs of the 'type' and (along with flowers and samarae) the illustrations of Stella Ross-Craig,[7] and with characteristic monopodial trunk and inclination in the crown (girth 2.5m), survives (2014) on Whitehouse Loan, Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh.[8] Since this specimen, which has grown to maturity without apparent pruning or storm-damage, will have been selected by the plantsmen who turned The Meadows and Bruntsfield Links into an elm collection (it stands between Exeters and Huntingdons), it appears to have been planted as an example of Melville's 'species', though not of Druce's 'type'-tree. Its probable date of planting, the mid-20th century, coincides with Melville's paper drawing attention to this peculiar British elm.

References

  1. ↑ Coleman, M., Hollingsworth, M. L. and Hollingsworth, P. M. (2000). "Application of RAPDs to the critical taxonomy of the English endemic elm Ulmus plotii Druce". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 133 (3): 241–262. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2000.tb01545.x.
  2. ↑ Coleman, Max (2002). "British elms". British Wildlife 13 (6): 390–395.
  3. ↑ Coleman's description, in correspondence, 2013.
  4. ↑ Elwes, H. J.; Henry, A (1913). The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland 7.
  5. ↑ Jackson, A. Bruce (1927). Catalogue of the Trees & Shrubs [at Westonbirt] in the Collection of the Late Lieut-Col. Sir George Lindsay Holford. London. p. 195.
  6. ↑ "Photographs of supposed U. minor subsp. minor × U. minor var. plotii in RBGE, now described by RBGE as aff. 'Plotii'".
  7. ↑ Richens, R. H. (1983). "7". Elm.
  8. ↑ "aff. Plotii. Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh".
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