The Elm of Poelitzstrasse

The records cannot agree on what this tree is. Leipzig's list of natural monuments, as transcribed on Wikipedia, calls it a field elm. The city's tree cadastre and Wikidata call it a European white elm. We have gone with the cadastre, the city's own record of its trees, but the question is open. Either way it is an elm that made the list as a street tree. It stands on the pavement of Poelitzstrasse in Gohlis-Sued, 2.91 metres round the trunk and 19 metres tall by the cadastre's figures, and it has been protected as natural monument number 159 since 1999, with a protected zone 15 metres around it. Elms are the trees Europe lost. Dutch elm disease has killed most of the continent's big field elms since the last century, while white elms have held out better. What this one came through, nobody has written down. The record is thin in other ways. No source gives an age; the cadastre's planting year of 1896 is an estimate for an age class, not a record of this tree. And the latest sign of life is the cadastre still listing it as standing in October 2026. Nobody has posted a photograph or an observation of it lately. Anyone passing can settle both questions. White elm seeds hang on long stalks with a fringe of fine hairs; field elm seeds sit close to the twig. Tell us which you see, and that it is still there.