Cultivar Ulmus aff. 'Plotii' Rank Species | Origin England | |
Similar Ulmus minor 'Propendens', Ulmus minor 'Schuurhoek', Ulmus minor 'Purpurascens', Ulmus 'Recerta', Ulmus 'Amsterdam' | ||
Ulmus aff. 'Plotii', following Dr Max Coleman's findings about Plot Elm (2000) and his paper on British elms (2002), is the name given to elms in England, of various genotypes, that resemble but do not completely match the 'type'-tree, U. minor 'Plotii'.
Contents
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", 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'." 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
A few Plot-like field elms have entered cultivation (see Accessions below).
Two trees formerly labelled U. minor subsp. minor × U. minor var. lockii, and for a time referred to as U. aff. 'Plotii', that stand (2016) in the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, have been re-classified on the RBGE database as U. minor 'Umbraculifera Gracilis'. An elm cultivar of the same clone and similar age, also formerly known as U. aff. 'Plotii', stands on Whitehouse Loan, Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh.
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 the parkland of Westonbirt House, mature by 1912 when Henry photographed it for his Trees of Great Britain & Ireland (see Plot Elm page), was said by Elwes to be the largest-known tree of its kind in Britain. It was 88 feet high and 8.1 feet in girth in 1921. Elwes and Henry examined Druce's 'type' trees in Banbury and the elms of Madingley Road, Cambridge, as well as the Westonbirt specimens, and considered all three the same tree. Some authorities, however, consider the Westonbirt specimens elms of the 'Plot-type' category.