Bergulme (Wych Elm) at the forestry office, Gosau

Upper Austria's list of natural monuments calls this elm one of the largest of a rare species in the province: a wych elm 27 metres tall, standing opposite the village office in Gosau. The province protected it on 18 December 1980, the same day as the copper beech on the hill about 80 metres away, and described the spot with a precision most registers never bother with: opposite the Gemeindeamt, about eight metres west of the forestry office building. The file gives a height and nothing else. No girth, no age. Nobody has dated this tree; if you know when it went in, or have put a tape round it, tell us. Then the honest part. The most recent dated evidence that it still stands is a photograph taken in October 2015. Wych elm is one of the species Dutch elm disease kills, and eleven years is long enough for that to happen without anyone updating a register. We have no report that it has gone, and none that it is still there. If you pass the forestry office, a photograph would settle it. What the register does make easy is finding it. With the beech, it turns Gosau into one stop rather than two: a pair of trees protected on the same winter day, a short walk apart, on the valley road up from Bad Goisern. Look from the road; the register's directions are all you need.