Elms in the Landscape
1) Coppiced Woodland
Oliver Rackham (1980) divides woodland elms into two types:-
a) Non-invasive - includes the Wych Elm, a long-established native elm. It is rather infrequent
in Eastern England, being recorded from about one wood in four. Typically for a non-invasive
elm it produces a good coppice stool. The invasive elms tend not to coppice well. In Essex
woodland the stools are of rather infrequent occurrence, often only one or two stools are found
per wood. However, larger areas do occur. Meeps Hole, Ramsden Crays, has about one and a
half acres of pure Wych Elm. It can also produce large stools. The one stool in Cow Wood,
Panfield, is 24 ft. across (Rackham, 1980). A second type of non-invasive elm is the Lineage
Elm (see p. 11). It is an elm peculiar to Eastern England, in particular to the woods of north
Essex and south Suffolk. Rackham has found them in almost every ancient wood in this area.
There are a few records from south Essex. It is another tree that coppices well, and is found as
a standard tree and, as a rare, pollard tree in Hatfield and probably Epping Forest. It produces
no, or very few, suckers. As a woodland type Lineage Elm are very vulnerable because of their
inability to sucker. In 1980 Oliver Rackham made a plea for the Lineage Elms of Sampford
West Wood, an Essex Naturalists' Trust Reserve, the largest surviving stand of this elm type.
The woodland had been threatened by attempts to plant conifers and many of the old trees were
'ringed' to kill them. The elms, fortunate at the time, were left, only to succumb to Dutch Elm
Disease between then and 1987 (Tabor 1987).
Lineage Elm occurs widely in north Essex. Specific records include Bassingbourn Wood,
Bocking; Cow Wood, Panfield; Launderfield Wood and Tarecroft Wood, Rivenhall; Meeps
Hole Wood, Ramsden Crays; Canfield Hart, Takely and Shadwell Wood, Ashdon (Rackham,
1980).
b) Invasive Elms - these elms are usually of the U. minor group or U. procera, which both
produce suckers. Often the elms invade woodland as suckers from nearby trees, for instance
those in hedgerows or around a nearby farm building. Rarely some invasions may be initiated
by the chance survival of a seedling. I have seen a now dead large elm formerly growing in the
ditch of a wood near Cressing Temple, which presumably produced the suckers now growing
on the woodbank. U. procera invasions tend to occur in south Essex where this species is most
prevalent. Rackham (1986a) records 37 elm invasions in 21 woods in south-east Essex, all but
four of the invasions being U. procera. U. minor tends to be prevalent in the northern half of
the county, again within its traditional area of distribution. Rackham (1986a) records elm
invasions of up to 2 acres in Nine Acre and Barton Hall Grove in south-east Essex; the majority
of invasions occurring in mixed ashwood.
Elm as Timber in Coppiced Woodland
Elm is little documented as a timber tree in the medieval record, but has almost certainly always
been present but generally uncommon as a standard tree in woods. In 1801 the trees of two
Essex woods were surveyed and the elm standards were counted. The same woods were
surveyed in 1973 (Rackham, 1986) with the following results:-
29