Ulmus 1 88 1 



which the original Huntingdon elm was raised. 1 found four distinct forms of elm. 

 The oldest, which appear to have been growing in hedgerows before the park was 

 enclosed about 1750, are of no great height, though one of them near the north 

 lodge is 2oi ft. in girth. These are an inferior type of Huntingdon elm, and had shed 

 most of their leaves without colouring well. Some taller and straighter trees which 

 are true English elms grow near them, and had their leaves still on and quite green. 



About one hundred yards north of the Japanese garden, there is an old tree 

 80 ft. by 16^ ft. of the true Huntingdon character, having its trunk split to the 

 ground and the leaves nearly all fallen. On the edge of the grove was a group of 

 bushy ill-shaped trees with small glabrous leaves. 



Near these, within the grove which is fenced off, are the tallest and finest elms 

 which I saw in the park, one of them being 120 ft. by 17^ ft., the leaves of which, 

 differing from the Huntingdon type, were still on and quite green. Its tall straight 

 trunk had a large wound where a branch had been torn out by the wind. A bed of 

 suckers surrounded this group of trees, some of which have been transplanted to the 

 Huntingdon nursery, in the hope of preserving a better type of Huntingdon elm 

 than the trees now sold, which, as I am informed by Mr. Perkins, proprietor of this 

 nursery, are usually budded on wych elm stocks. This fine elm is probably a 

 seedling of the Huntingdon elm, and may be called the " Hinchingbrooke " elm. 



The Huntingdon elm, though a favourite tree among nurserymen on account of 

 its very rapid growth, and often making an ornamental wide-spreading tree, should 

 not, in my opinion, be planted as an avenue or park tree. Its habit of forking tends 

 to split the trunk in a way that other elms do not show ; and out of a large number 

 of trees which I have felled at Colesborne, at about sixty years after planting, hardly 

 one was free from defects caused by this bad habit. I calculated the loss in measure- 

 ment of the timber on these trees was from 15 to 25 per cent, and the timber, 

 though fit for tinplate boxes, is pale in colour and soft in texture, compared with 

 English or wych elm. It grows, however, with such rapidity, that it might pay to 

 plant in woods, or if care is taken to prune all the branches when young, up to 40 

 or 50 ft. As a rule, it loses its leaves a month before the English elm and colours 

 badly, but in the remarkable season of 191 1, a row of elms of this variety growing 

 at Colesborne on dry soil with a southern aspect, turned a brilliant yellow, just 

 before the leaves fell in October. 



The largest elm I have ever seen, and the largest tree of any kind in Great 

 Britain, grew in the grove of Magdalen College, Oxford, but had never been 

 noticed by arboriculturists,^ until Mr. W. Baker, Curator of the Botanic Garden, showed 

 it me in July 1905. Though generally supposed to be a wych elm, it was undoubtedly 

 identical in habit and leaves with U. vegeta. On October 14th of the same year I saw 

 it again, when its leaves had fallen, whilst the English elms in the same park were 



1 H. A. Wilson, in a History of Magdalen College, 286 {1899), states: "Most of the trees in the grove are English elms 

 dating from the Restoration period. Two wych elms were planted probably about the same time as the others. The girth of 

 one of these trees in 1831, at five feet, is stated to have been 21 ft., in 1866 23 ft. 9 in. In June 1899 it measured 26 ft. 5 in. 

 and its height was approximately 130 feet. R. T. Gunther, Oxford Gardens, 2l8 (1912), gives a reproduction of a photo- 

 graph of the great Magdalen elm, which was taken in 1899- He states that there is an error in Wilson's account, as the 

 measurement given of 21 ft. girth in 1831 was really that of another tree which fell in 1861. The latter was estimated to 

 contain 1092 cubic feet. 



