The Malieveld Elm

An elm from the 1830s has outlived two epidemics that killed almost everything of its kind. Dutch elm disease takes its name from the country that first identified it, in the years after the First World War, and a second, far more aggressive strain arrived in the 1970s and finished most of what the first had left. Between them they emptied Dutch streets of the tree that had defined them for centuries. This one went into the ground somewhere between 1830 and 1840 and is still standing, on the field where the country goes to be heard. The Malieveld began as a court for pall mall, the ball and mallet game the 17th century was mad about, and became the open ground in the middle of The Hague where farmers park their tractors, unions bring their whistles and hundreds of thousands of people have gathered for one cause or another. Between demonstrations it takes funfairs and circus tents. The elm has stood at the edge of all of it for close to two centuries, a short walk from the parliament buildings everybody comes here to shout at, and almost nobody in those crowds has ever looked up at it.