ABNORMAL FRUITING OF THE COMMON ELM. 81
whatever from this general rule; and, on both occasions, the
amount of fruit produced was exceedingly small. On the
23rd April, I saw one or two small bunches of unripe samara
on a fine elm in the garden of the vicarage at Easthorpe, near
Colchester; and, on the 22nd May, a large elm in the grounds of
Stisted Hall, near Braintree, was shedding a very few ripe
samara. Both these trees, it should be noted, grew in gardens
and were very likely not the Common Field Elm. The fact that
the elms neither flowered nor fruited in Essex this year was also
observed by various friends and correspondents, who communi-
cated their observations to me.
Nor was this all; for, as I anticipated, many of the elms
throughout Essex were extraordinarily late in producing their
foliage this year—another sign of their exhausted condition. On
the 1st May (when, as a rule, the leaves are beginning to
develop rapidly), I noted that "The leaf-buds are coming out,
but scarcely show green as yet." Three weeks later, on the
22nd, when I passed through the parishes of Witham, Rivenhall,
Stisted, Pattiswick, Markshall, and Coggeshall, I noted that "A
great many of the elms (without doubt, those which over-flowered
last year) show, as yet, from a little distance, no trace whatever
of leaves coming on their upper branches, though examination
at close range with a field-glass showed the presence of very
small unopened leaf-buds. There were, however, on the short
lower branches fringing the stems of these trees, a number of
small leaves. Other trees (perhaps one half of the whole
number) were pretty fully covered with leaves."
Clearly, therefore, the abnormal flowering and fruiting of
the elms last year has greatly disturbed their economy. At the
same time, I have not seen (as I expected to do) any dead
elms which appeared to have perished as a result of their abnor-
mal efforts to produce flowers and fruit last year.
It is, perhaps, worth noting that, on the 16th July, I saw
young elm seedlings, twelve or fifteen inches high, and evidently
sprung from last year's seed, growing in Nightingale's Wood,
Roxwell, showing that last year's seed was capable of growing
(in some cases, at any rate) elsewhere than in gardens and
around houses.—M.C., Oct. 1910.