1880 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



second year. Buds with minutely pubescent ciliate scales. Leaves (Plate 412, 

 Fig. 16) oval, 3^ to 5 in. long, i\ to 3 in. broad, very unequal at the base, abruptly 

 contracted at the apex into a long serrated point ; upper surface smooth, glabrous ; 

 lower surface with slight tufts of pubescence in the axils, glabrous elsewhere, but 

 dotted with numerous minute brown glands; lateral nerves 14 to 18 pairs, often 

 forked ; margin coarsely biserrate, non-ciliate ; petiole \ to in. long, more or less 

 pubescent with scattered hairs. 



Flowers, twenty to thirty in a cluster, on very short pedicels, very irregular in 

 size and in the number of the sepals and stamens ; calyx campanulate with a narrowed 

 wrinkled tubular part at its base, or funnel-shaped, with four or five pink lobes ; 

 stamens, three, four, or five, with pale pink filaments and bright red anthers ; 

 stigmas bright red. Samarae on very short pedicels, obovate-oval, about f to 1 in. 

 long and f to f in. broad, glabrous, non-ciliate, rounded at the apex with a short 

 notch closed by the incurved stigmas ; seed a little above the centre of the samara, 

 with its apex extending nearly to the base of the notch ; seed-cavity long and 

 pointed at both ends. 



The Huntingdon elm suckers very freely. Corky wings are never developed 

 on the branchlets. It bears in favourable seasons a great abundance of seed, which 

 is remarkably fertile. Sowings made at Cambridge in 1909, showed that this tree is 

 a hybrid, one of the parents being U. montana, and the other uncertain, but prob- 

 ably U, nitens. I need not repeat here, the full account of the seedlings of the 

 Huntingdon elm, which appeared in Journ. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) xxxix. 292-293 (1910). 

 It is interesting to note that the fact that the Huntingdon elm does not come true 

 from seed was established ! at the Oxford assizes in 1847, when a nurseryman brought 

 an action against Mr. Rivers of Sawbridgeworth, for supplying seedlings of the 

 Huntingdon elm, which were expected to be the same as grafted plants, but which 

 turned out to be very different. 



The Huntingdon elm was raised in Wood and Ingram's nursery at Huntingdon 

 about 1 750, from seed, which is said 2 to have been gathered from some old trees in 

 Hinchingbrooke Park, near Huntingdon. Mr. John Ingram, who wrote an account 2 

 of its origin, in 1847, states that these trees were at that time still living, and were 

 the true English or field elm ; but as he wrote one hundred years after the original 

 tree was raised, no reliance can be placed on his identification of the parent tree, 

 which was more likely to have been U. nitens, which is still common in Hinchingbrooke 

 Park. 



The name, Chichester elm, which was given to this tree as early 8 as 1829, cannot 

 be explained. It was also supposed to be of American origin, and is occasionally 

 sold by some nurseries as U. americana. (A. H.) 



I visited Hinchingbrooke Park, the seat of the Earl of Sandwich, on 30th October 

 191 1, with Mr. M. D. Barkley, agent for the estate, to find if possible the trees from 



1 Cf. Gard. Chron. 1847, p. 507. Elm seedlings with opposite and with alternate leaves were noticed and figured by 

 Carriere, in Rev. Hort. xlvii. 286, figs. 47, 48 (1875) ; but he was unable to explain their significance. 

 s Gard. CAron. 1847, pp. 507, 526. 

 Lindley, Syn. Brit. Flora, 227 (1829). Cf. Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1404 (1838). 



