The Cemetery Gateway Elm

It may be the last of its kind anywhere, and nobody is certain it is that kind at all. Brighton and Hove City Council listed this tree in 2022 as Ulmus 'Lombartsii', a cultivar raised at the Lombarts nursery in Zundert in the Netherlands around 1910 and now so rare in Europe that this one is described as possibly the only survivor. Wikipedia's page on the cultivar then undercuts the claim from the other side: the leaves match herbarium specimens closely enough, but the tree lacks the drooping branch habit that defines 'Lombartsii', so it may be some other corky-barked field elm instead. Both the rarity and the doubt rest on the same identification, which is why they arrive together. What is not in dispute is the tree. It stands at the entrance to Brighton and Preston Cemetery on Hartington Road, beside a gothic terracotta gateway, with the thick corky ridging on its twigs and branches that gives this kind of elm its name. A matching elm once stood on the other side of the gate until Dutch elm disease took it, so the pair is now one. Nobody has recorded an age, a girth or a height for it. If you can settle the name, we would like to hear it.