The Caucasian Elm of North Walk

Oxford's University Parks hold nine trees recognised as national champions, the tallest or largest recorded example of their species anywhere in Britain, and the Caucasian Elm on North Walk is the one that towers over the rest of the list. At around 33 metres it is the tallest Caucasian Elm recorded in the country, its crown spreading some 14 metres wide, dense and many-stemmed in the way the species characteristically grows once mature. Zelkova carpinifolia looks enough like a true elm to share the common name, but it belongs to a separate genus entirely, which is precisely why specimens like this one across Britain survived the Dutch Elm disease epidemic that devastated the country's actual elms from the 1970s onward. The Parks themselves opened to the public in 1864, laid out on former university-owned farmland along the River Cherwell, and have been adding notable specimen trees to their collection ever since. This one has had over a century to put on height in the open, undisturbed ground along North Walk, uncompeted for light in a way few urban trees ever get to be, which is likely a large part of how it became a national record holder rather than merely an old tree.