The Caucasian Elm of Royal Victoria Park

When Royal Victoria Park opened in 1830 as one of England's first public parks, its designers lined the south side of Royal Avenue with elms. Dutch Elm disease reached Britain in the 1970s and worked through the country's mature elms with brutal efficiency, and this avenue was no exception, except for one tree. It is called an elm, but it is genetically a Zelkova, a close relative that happens to be immune to the fungus that carries the disease, which is the only reason it is still standing while its neighbours are long gone. This particular variety traces back to a specimen the 18th-century nurseryman James Gordon brought into cultivation in Britain, distinct enough from the wild Caucasian Elm that it carries his name, 'James Gordon', and most of the Caucasian Elms now growing across the UK are propagated from that same original stock rather than the species as it grows in the wild. Nearly two centuries after the park's founders planted it as one tree among many in a fashionable avenue, it stands alone as the last living piece of Royal Victoria Park's original planting scheme, just inside the gates on Royal Avenue, its irregular, densely branched crown looking nothing like the elms it once stood beside.