Ulmus Minor Subsp. minor - Cultivation

Cultivation

Many mature specimens still survive in England, notably in East Anglia. Here, the elms on the isolated Dengie peninsular in Essex, still thriving in the 1980s when Professor Oliver Rackham made his study, continue to fare better than most. The Woodland Trust currently lists (2012) some 120 "ancient" smooth-leaved elms in England and Wales. As the tree suckers readily, its genetic resources are not considered endangered.

Narrow-leaved elm was occasionally planted as an ornamental urban tree. Among mature survivors in city parks in the U.K. (2012) are six fine specimens in Leith Links, Edinburgh.

Clones of mature survivors in Essex believed, but not scientifically proven, to have some innate resistance to Dutch Elm Disease, are now available commercially. In the early 1990s Paul King of King&Co nursery took and potted cuttings from a number of mature elms that had survived Dutch Elm Disease. Over the next decade, as the original trees were still healthy, over 2000 ‘plugs’ were produced via micropropagation. Since then the trees have reached 10-12 feet in height and are now established in 45-litre containers. By the time they were released for sale in 2010, well over £75,000 had been spent on the project. The field-performance of the King elms is currently being monitored and the results assessed. Although it is unlikely that the trees are immune to DED, they do seem highly resistant. During the 1950s and 60s R. H. Richens of the Commonwealth Bureau of Plant Breeding and Genetics conducted extensive research on Ulmus in England and wrote a number of papers on the subject. One such, 'Studies on Elms, Chapter VII: Essex Elms', is particularly pertinent. Richens took samples of elm populations in virtually every parish of Essex. Such details as width and length of leaf, teeth size and number, were noted. King believes that his elms are hybrids as described by Richens in his Essex paper, and that their resistance to DED may be a result of hybridisation. If this is the case, they are a variety of Ulmus × hollandica, not Ulmus minor subsp. minor.