Ulmus aff. 'Plotii'
| Ulmus minor | |
|---|---|
| File:Plot Elm, Westonbirt, UK, before 1913.jpg
Ulmus aff. 'Plotii', Westonbirt Arboretum, before 1913
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| Cultivar | Ulmus aff. 'Plotii' |
| Origin | England |
The Field Elm cultivar 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 England that resemble but do not completely match the 'type'-tree, U. minor 'Plotii'. Melville's brief description, at the end of a paragraph on Plot Elm in a 1946 paper, of "a second small-leaved elm, as yet unnamed, found in the lower Thames Valley and East Anglia", that "shares some of the curious features of the Plot Elm but lacks its graceful habit",[3] may be a reference to aff. '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'."[4] 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.
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Plot-type elm, Edinburgh, October 2014.jpg
Ulmus aff. 'Plotii', Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh (October 2014)
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Ulmus aff. Plotii - RBGE.jpg
Ulmus aff. 'Plotii', Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
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Aff. Plotii - Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh. Nov 2015.jpeg
Selection of leaves from Bruntsfield Links aff. 'Plotii', Edinburgh (November 2015)
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Bark of aff. Plotii - Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh.jpg
Bark of aff. 'Plotii', Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh
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Trunk of aff. Plotii - Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh.jpg
The trunk of aff. 'Plotii' at Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh
Pests and diseases
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... Cedric stopped the car when they were well out of the suburbs on the Hertfordshire side, at a place where a by-road ran up a slope of ploughland. At the top was a short row of elms whose crests were asymmetrical – shaped like one-sided foam on a tankard of beer, as if exposed to a prevailing breeze. |
| – From E. B. C. Jones, Morning and Cloud (1932).[5][6] |
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
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.[7] It was 88 feet high and 8.1 feet in girth in 1921.[8] Elwes and Henry examined Druce's 'type' trees in Banbury and the elms of Madingley Road, Cambridge (see U. minor 'Plotii'), as well as the Westonbirt specimens, and considered all three the same tree. It is now thought likely, however, that the Westonbirt specimens were elms of the 'Plot-type' category.[9]
Two trees labelled U. minor subsp. minor × U. minor var. lockii, also referred to as U. aff. 'Plotii',[10] survive (2016) in the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.[11][12] A very similar elm (girth 2.5m), with a more marked inclination in the crown, survives (2016) on Whitehouse Loan, Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh.[13] Since this specimen 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 may have been planted as an example of Melville's Plot 'species', though not of Druce's 'type'-tree (see U. minor 'Plotii').
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Melville, Ronald, 'The British Elms', The New Naturalist, 1946, p.40
- ↑ Coleman's description, in correspondence, 2013.
- ↑ Jones, E. B. C., Morning and Cloud (1932), p.234
- ↑ Photograph of an asymmetrical Hertfordshire elm, 'The Backs', River Lea, Ware, Herts. (from Hammerton, Wonderful Britain, 1920, vol.2): oreald.com [1]
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Coleman, Max, private communication (Aug. 2015)
- ↑ Coleman's description, in correspondence, 2013.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ placestoseeinyourlifetime.com, photo 12 [2]
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
