Field Elm

Ulmus minor

Ulmus minor was the species Dutch elm disease hit hardest, so every big field elm still standing has outlived nearly all of its kind. We map 11 of them, in 11 cities.

Sliven's Old Elm, beside the town hall, is put at about a thousand years by tradition, won European Tree of the Year in 2014 and is on a Bulgarian coin; the disease reached it too, and specialists are keeping two low branches alive. The Olmo de Navajas in Valencia province was planted in 1636 by a settler named Roque Pastor and is still the centre of the village square. In Romania, the elm of Căpeni is 7.3 metres round. French has a phrase for being kept waiting, wait for me under the elm, and the elm in question stands in front of Saint-Gervais in Paris: the present one was planted in 1935, on a spot that has carried an elm since the Middle Ages.

Alicante

The Centenary Elms of Panteón de Quijano

100-200 years · San Antón

Dutch elm disease took most of Europe's elms and never arrived here.

Paris

The Elm of Saint-Gervais

90 years · Le Marais, 4th arrondissement

This elm is not particularly old.

Photo: Mbzt (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Vienna

The Field Elm of Burggasse

111 years · Neubau, 7th district

Europe lost most of its large elms in the second half of the twentieth century, which is reason enough to look at a field elm planted in 1915 and still standing.

Parma

The Field Elm of Parco Ducale

90 years · Parco Ducale

Dutch elm disease reached Italy in the 1930s and took most of the country's mature field elms with it over the following two decades, the same epidemic that emptied European streets and parks of th...