As I head out of the deciduous woodland of Foxes’ Grove, I spot it, tucked away near a small conifer plantation. Tall and skinny, with a few sprigs of growth sticking out from the slender trunk, this sapling is newly planted and decorated with shiny deer protection round its base. It appears insignificant, yet the reddish-brown buds of this young elm contain a secret, as if tightly wrapped in brown paper.
I am standing on Elm Bank, which in the 1950s was crowned with English elms. They were the largest trees on the farm, reaching up over 30 metres high. Those trees are gone, dead before I was born. They eventually succumbed to Dutch elm disease, after a virulent new fungal strain arrived in the 1960s. The disease, spread by elm bark beetles, disrupts a tree’s water-conducting system. It has removed more than 60 million trees from our countryside, and its destruction continues. In the end, the dead wood of those massive trunks was dramatically blown up using dynamite. Today, aside from a few evergreens, I am surrounded by open grassland.
The sapling was a present to my father from his children. It could be considered a sinister gift, as elm is linked in folklore to death and the underworld. It was also commonly used to make coffins and is now synonymous with loss and disease. However, like my father, it is no ordinary specimen.
This young tree is an Ulmus “New Horizon”, specially bred in Hampshire for resistance to the deadly fungus. Immunity should persist as it reproduces, via a strong and far-extending root system, reaching out suckers underground that then rise up to become resistant offspring.
The sapling is first and foremost a gift for my dad, but it is also intended as a gift for this tenanted farm, and for the white-letter hairstreak butterfly. Ulmus is the sole host and food plant for this rare species, named for the white “w” on the underside of its wings, which has consequently experienced massive decline as we have lost trees. I hope it is a legacy for future generations on this borrowed land that will unfurl over decades like those nascent leaves in springtime.
