Origin Späth nursery, Berlin, Germany | ||
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Umbraculifera Gracilis' was obtained as a sport of 'Umbraculifera' by the Späth nursery of Berlin c.1897.
Contents
Description
The tree is distinguished by its long oval crown, but with thinner branches and smaller leaves than 'Umbraculifera'.
Pests and diseases
The cultivar is susceptible to Dutch elm disease.
Cultivation
The only known surviving specimens are in North America and in Scotland (see Accessions below). A specimen at the Ryston Hall arboretum, Norfolk, obtained from the Späth nursery in Berlin before 1914, was killed by the earlier strain of Dutch elm disease in the 1930s. Three trees supplied by Späth to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1902 as U. campestris 'Umbraculifera gracilis' survive in Edinburgh (2016). A herbarium leaf-spray specimen from Amsterdam labelled U. carpinifolia Gled. f. 'Gracilis' var. (Späth) Rehd. closely resembles the Edinburgh trees. The two in RBGE were long known by an updated version of Melville's name for them, U. plotii × U. carpinifolia [:U. minor subsp. minor × U. minor var. lockii (also called U. aff. 'Plotii']). It is known that Melville, when he visited RBGE in 1958, renamed some of Späth's trees. The two he called U. carpinifolia Gled. × U. plotii Druce, were, according to one RBGE herbarium sheet, formerly called U. campestris umbraculifera (see External links below), the name of their parent tree not present in RBGE. Taken together, the evidence suggested that the three Edinburgh trees (the third is on Bruntsfield Links) were the clone Späth supplied as U. campestris 'Umbraculifera gracilis', an identification confirmed in 2016 by RBGE. It is not known why Melville was permitted to disregard the trees' documented Central Asian provenance, and pronounce them hybrids of Plot Elm, a local variety of English field elm.
Other herbarium leaf-specimens labelled U. carpinifolia Gled. cv. 'Gracilis' var. Späth, however, from Dahlem and Haarlem, appear to show a clone different from the Amsterdam specimen (see External links).