Elm

The type of Elm that is native to Scotland is the Wych Elm. It is one of our largest trees, up to twenty-five metres tall with a very wide trunk and a great spread of huge limbs, tall and stately in park or farm land, but often leaning and unruly in the wild. It is common throughout the South and East, but large specimens are often seen to be bleached and leafless, affected by Dutch Elm disease, a fungus infection carried by a beetle that is attracted to the Elm. The disease has not spread to the Elms in the far North and down the coasts of the West Highlands. Throughout its past and present area there are place-names using its old Gaelic name ‘Leamhan’, such as Lephin Corrach in Kintrye and the name ‘Leven’ in Dunbartonshire, Fife, and near Glencoe. The tree’s bark – in Gaelic ‘rùisg’ , or ‘cairt’ – is pale grey/brown, and rough even when young, becoming very rough and cracked. The branches and twigs are dark grey/brown, and the leaf-buds – ‘gucagan’ in Gaelic - are very dark brown, almost black. The tree doesn’t come into leaf until early May but it flowers a month earlier. The male and female flowers, together on the same tree, are small but may be numerous, and are pink becoming orange. Soon the flat oval seed cases appear, large and pale green, turning to light brown – a single seed in each flat papery case. As the seeds mature the finely-veined and sharply-toothed leaves unfurl, maturing to large, wide and spear-shaped, with pronounced point. The leaves – in Gaelic ‘duilleagan’ - are larger than those of other kinds of Elm, and become rough like fine sandpaper, rasping when rubbed, though much-loved by cattle, as often seen by the straight-edged lower canopy, browsed at the height of a reaching neck. The leaves turn yellow in Autumn, though not all at once, so that an Autumn Elm displays a great spray of yellow and green. Many old specimens have great burrs on the trunk, the bulbous pitted growths that form swirling grain patterns valued by makers of bowls and furniture, and the soft sappy bark of medium-aged limbs has been peeled off in strips to make woven chair seats and backs.