The national register files this tree in the bucket marked ordinary Dutch elm.
Wych Elm 'Exoniensis'
Ulmus glabra 'Exoniensis'
This is the feather elm, pluimiep in Dutch, also called the Exeter Elm: a cultivar of wych elm bred narrow and upright where the wild species spreads wide, grafted on a rootstock to keep that shape. We map 4 of them, in 2 cities.
Old wych elms of any kind are a rare sight after a century of Dutch elm disease took most of them out, which is reason enough to go looking for these. In Leeuwarden, two grow in the small Vosseparkje at the edge of the old town, told apart mainly by which one stands nearer the pond. A third is a street planting on Molenstraat, where the graft union has swollen into a collar of scar tissue over five metres round, wider at that point than the trunk beneath it. Alkmaar's, on the rampart behind the cultural centre, has survived about 130 years and is filed in one register as an ordinary Dutch elm.
Alkmaar
Leeuwarden
The park this elm stands in was laid out around the city's drinking water.
The national register says nothing about how big this elm is and rather a lot about where it stands: it has a fine spot by the pond.
The graft on this street elm has swollen into a collar of scar tissue with a circumference of more than five metres, wider at that single point than the trunk of almost anything else on this list.
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