13
ELMS IN ESSEX
Some members may have heard that the next
Naturalist' to be published later this year is
concerned with the elms of Essex. The project
started when going through a collection of
photographs and postcards taken in the early
part of this century I noted quite a few
consisted of pictures of farmland, and by
coincidence many of these showed elms in
hedgerows. Now, of course, through the
depredations of Dutch elm disease most of these
great elm trees have disappeared - a sad loss
to the Essex landscape- The book is largely
to be a photographic and historical review of
elms in Essex.
I have done some research into elms in
south-west Essex and although most of the
majestic, billowing mature trees have been lost
as elsewhere in Essex, I find that elm is very
much alive and well and abundantly suckering.
In most areas, sooner or later, in hedgerows
that are older than eighteenth or nineteenth
century enclosures, elm suckers of one species
or another are sure to be found. The suckers
can be very difficult to identify as the leaves
can be very different from the parent tree and
even on the parent tree the leaves are
generally very variable. Mature trees are the
best for identification purposes, but, of
course, these are now far less common than they
were prior to the ravages of Dutch elm disease.
Elms seem to have been affected differently by
the disease. English Elm, characteristic of
so much of south Essex, is, as far as I can
tell, reduced to suckers. I don't know of any