Planting hope
ELMS ‘have been forgotten’ by tree planters, laments Mandy Haggith, a member of the Culag Community Woodland Trust, which manages parts of the Assynt estate, Sutherland, a remote mountainous area on the west coast of Scotland. ‘People had sort of given up on elm, thinking: “It’s only going to get a disease, don’t bother.”’
The trust is leading the Assynt Elm Project, funded by the John Muir Trust and Forestry Scotland and assisted by local schoolchildren and volunteers. It involves planting saplings grown from local elm seeds—one way to safeguard the area’s population of more than 100 wych-elm trees, which are deemed of ‘national significance’.
A ‘resilient’ seeding from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s breeding programme will also be planted and the trust’s strategy is to ensure that locals are able to identify elms and the disease, so that infected limbs can be reported and removed promptly. ‘Assynt is special because we know exactly where all the elms are,’ explains Ms Haggith, who is writing a book on the species. ‘There are 31 locations in the parish.’
The sweeping wych elm, beloved by caterpillars of the declining whiteletter hairstreak butterfly, is the only elm that is regarded as truly native to the UK. After 50 years of Dutch elm disease and millions of trees lost in the UK, the wych is incredibly rare and now more commonly found as a hedgerow shrub.
‘Wych elm is our native elm in Scotland—and people have mistakenly thought it doesn’t get Dutch elm disease. But that’s not true,’ adds Ms Haggith. ‘It’s simply that the beetle that transmits the disease needs warm temperatures, so now that the temperatures in summer are getting hotter, the beetle is spreading further.’ Visit www.culagwoods.org.uk for more information.