Ulmus minorMill., the field elm, is by far the most polymorphic of the European species, although its taxonomy remains a matter of contention. Its natural range is predominantly south European, extending to Asia Minor and Iran; its northern outposts are the Baltic islands of Öland and Gotland, although it may have been introduced by humans. The tree's typical habitat is low-lying forest along the main rivers, growing in association with oak and ash, where it tolerates summer floods as well as droughts.
Ulmus chumlia is a small deciduous tree endemic to the Himalaya from the Kashmir to central Nepal, and the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Xizang (Tibet) in China. It is found in broadleaf forest on mountain slopes at elevations of 1000–3000 m. Richens noted that the species appeared to be the same as that named by Grudzinskaya as Ulmus androssowii var. virgata, which she considered an intermediate between U. minor and U. pumila.
The field elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Stricta', known as Cornish elm, was commonly found in South West England, Brittany, and south-west Ireland, until the arrival of Dutch elm disease in the late 1960s. The origin of Cornish elm in England remains a matter of contention. It is commonly assumed to have been introduced from Brittany. It is also considered possible that the tree may have survived the ice ages on lands to the south of Cornwall long since lost to the sea. Henry thought it "probably native in the south of Ireland". Dr Max Coleman of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, arguing in his 2002 paper on British elms that there was no clear distinction between species and subspecies, suggested that known or suspected clones of Ulmus minor, once cultivated and named, should be treated as cultivars, preferred the designation U. minor 'Stricta' to Ulmus minor var. stricta. The DNA of 'Stricta' has been investigated and the cultivar is now known to be a clone.
The field elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Plotii', commonly known as Lock elm or Lock's elm, Plot's elm or Plot elm, and first classified as Ulmus sativaMill. var. Lockii and later as Ulmus plotii by Druce in 1907-11, is endemic mainly to the East Midlands of England, notably around the River Witham in Lincolnshire, in the Trent Valley around Newark-on-Trent, and around the village of Laxton, Northamptonshire. Ronald Melville suggested that the tree's distribution may be related to river valley systems, in particular those of the Trent, Witham, Welland, and Nene. Two further populations existed in Gloucestershire. It has been described as Britain's rarest native elm, and recorded by The Wildlife Trust as a nationally scarce species.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Sarniensis', known variously as Guernsey elm, Jersey elm, Wheatley elm, or Southampton elm, was first described by MacCulloch in 1815 from trees on Guernsey, and was planted in the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens in the 1820s. It was listed in the Loddiges catalogue of 1836 as Ulmus sarniensis and by Loudon in Hortus lignosus londinensis (1838) as U. campestris var. sarniensis. The origin of the tree remains obscure; Richens believed it "a mutant of a French population of Field elm", noting that "elms of similar leaf-form occur in Cotentin and in northern Brittany. They vary much in habit but some have a tendency to pyramidal growth. Whether the distinctive habit first developed on the mainland or in Guernsey is uncertain."
The hybrid elm cultivar Ulmus × hollandica 'Smithii', commonly known as the Downton Elm, was one of a number of cultivars arising from the crossing of the Wych Elm U. glabra with the Field Elm U. minor. The tree was originally planted at Downton Castle near Ludlow, as one of a batch, not all of them pendulous in habit, raised at Smith's Nursery, Worcester, England, from seeds obtained from a tree in Nottingham in 1810.
Ulmus minorsubsp.canescens is a small deciduous tree occasionally known by the common names grey elm, grey-leafed elm, and hoary elm. Its natural range extends through the lands of the central and eastern Mediterranean, from southern Italy, the islands of Sicily, Malta, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus, to Turkey, and as far south as Israel, where it is now considered rare and endangered in the wild. The tree is typically found amidst the comparatively humid coastal woodlands and scrublands.
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Atropurpurea' [:dark purple] was raised from seed at the Späth nursery in Berlin, Germany, circa 1881, as Ulmus montana atropurpurea, and was marketed there till the 1930s, being later classed as a cultivar by Boom. Henry (1913) included it under Ulmus montana cultivars but noted that it was "very similar to and perhaps identical with" Ulmus purpureaHort. At Kew it was renamed U. glabraHuds. 'Atropurpurea', but Späth used U. montana both for wych elm and for some U. × hollandica hybrids, so his name does not necessarily imply a wych elm cultivar. The Hesse Nursery of Weener, Germany, however, which marketed 'Atropurpurea' in the 1950s, listed it in later years as a form of U. glabraHuds..
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Propendens', described by Schneider in 1904 as U. glabra (:minor) var. suberosa propendens, Weeping Cork-barked elm, was said by Krüssmann (1976) to be synonymous with the U. suberosa pendula listed by Lavallée without description in 1877. Earlier still, Loudon's Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum had included an illustration of a pendulous "cork-barked field elm", U. campestris suberosa. An U. campestris suberosa pendula was in nurseries by the 1870s.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Microphylla Pendula', the Weeping small-leaved elm, was first listed by the Travemünde nursery, Lübeck, and described by Kirchner in Petzold & Kirchner's Arboretum Muscaviense (1864), as Ulmus microphylla pendulaHort.. By the 1870s it was being marketed in nurseries in Europe and America as Ulmus campestris var. microphylla pendula.
The hybrid elm cultivar Ulmus × hollandica 'Elegantissima' was the name given by A. R. Horwood in his Flora of Leicestershire and Rutland (1933) to an elm found in those counties and later identified by Melville as a natural hybrid between Wych Elm and Plot Elm. According to Melville, the hybrid occurs in the main areas of Plot Elm distribution, where it is more common than Plot Elm itself. The tree is sometimes known simply as the 'Midlands Elm'.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Goodyeri', commonly known as 'Goodyer's Elm', was discovered by John Goodyer in 1624 at Pennington near the Hampshire coast between Lymington and Christchurch. No old specimens are known to survive, but the tree is perpetuated by numerous root suckers, notably in the lanes about the Alice Lisle public house in the New Forest hamlet of Rockford. The tree has suffered misidentification in the centuries since its discovery, firstly by Philip Miller in his 'Gardeners' Dictionary' of 1731, and later in the early 20th century by Augustine Henry and Marcus Woodward, who both confused the tree with Plot Elm, whose centre of distribution is in the East Midlands, some 200 miles away and of completely different appearance.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Suberosa', commonly known as the Cork-barked elm, is a slow-growing or dwarf form of conspicuously suberose Field Elm. Of disputed status, it is considered a distinct variety by some botanists, among them Henry (1913), Krüssmann (1984), and Bean (1988), and is sometimes cloned and planted as a cultivar. Henry said the tree "appears to be a common variety in the forests of central Europe", Bean noting that it "occurs in dry habitats". By the proposed rule that known or suspected clones of U. minor, once cultivated and named, should be treated as cultivars, the tree would be designated U. minor 'Suberosa'. The Späth nursery of Berlin distributed an U. campestris suberosa alataKirchn. [:'corky-winged'] from the 1890s to the 1930s.
Ulmus × diversifolia, also known as the diverse leaved elm, was originally described by Melville in 1939 as a new species, U. diversifolia, though he later believed it a natural hybrid of Coritanian elm, Plot elm and Wych elm. He recorded its distribution in Hertfordshire, between Hatfield, Hertford and Watton-at-Stone, and in Suffolk, where it was common along the coastal plain from Ipswich and Felixstowe to Lowestoft and Beccles, occurring inland as far as Diss and Debenham, and probably extending further north into Norfolk and south towards Colchester, Essex. He accordingly referred to it as "the East Anglian elm".
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Viminalis Betulaefolia' (:'birch-leaved') is an elm tree of uncertain origin. An U. betulaefolia was listed by Loddiges of Hackney, London, in the catalogue of 1836, an U. campestris var. betulaefolia by Loudon in Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (1838), and an U. betulifoliaBooth by the Lawson nursery of Edinburgh. Henry described an U. campestris var. betulaefolia at Kew in 1913, obtained from Fulham nurseryman Osborne in 1879, as "scarcely different from var. viminalis ". Melville considered the tree so named at Kew a form of his U. × viminalis, while Bean (1988), describing U. 'Betulaefolia', likewise placed it under U. 'Viminalis' as an apparently allied tree. Loudon and Browne had noted that some forms of 'Viminalis' can be mistaken for a variety of birch. An U. campestris betulaefolia was distributed by Hesse's Nurseries, Weener, Germany, in the 1930s.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Viminalis Stricta' (:'narrow'), formerly known as U. campestris var. viminalis stricta, is a fastigiate form of Ulmus minor 'Viminalis'. A herbarium specimen at Kew labelled U. campestris var. viminalis f. stricta was considered by Melville a form of his U. × viminalis.
The field elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Viminalis' (:'willow-like'), occasionally referred to as the twiggy field elm, was raised by Masters in 1817, and listed in 1831 as U. campestris viminalis, without description. Loudon added a general description in 1838, and the Cambridge University Herbarium acquired a leaf specimen of the tree in 1866. Moss, writing in 1912, said that the Ulmus campestris viminalis from Cambridge University Herbarium was the only elm he thought agreed with the original Plot's elm as illustrated by Dr. Plot in 1677 from specimens growing in an avenue and coppice at Hanwell near Banbury. Elwes and Henry (1913) also considered Loudon's Ulmus campestris viminalis to be Dr Plot's elm. Its 19th-century name, U. campestris var. viminalis, led the cultivar to be classified for a time as a variety of English Elm. On the Continent, 'Viminalis' was the Ulmus antarcticaHort., 'zierliche Ulme' [:'dainty elm'] of Kirchner's Arboretum Muscaviense (1864).
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Glandulosa' was described as Ulmus glabra [:smooth-leaved] Mill. var. glandulosa by Lindley in A Synopsis of British Flora, arranged according to the Natural Order (1829), from trees near Ludlow, Shropshire. Melville identified a specimen in Ludlow in 1939, calling it in a 1946 paper "a good form of U. carpinifolia" [:U. minor ], describing it more fully and renaming it U. carpinifoliaGled. var. glandulosa (Lindl.). Regarding it as out of its natural range and deliberately planted, he referred to it as The Ludlow Elm, the "type tree" of a "variety" of Field Elm. Herbarium specimens of 'Glandulosa' are held in both the Lindley Herbarium in Cambridge and the Borrer Herbarium at Kew.
Ulmus minorvar.italica was first described by Augustine Henry in 1913, as a 'variety' of field elm from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Algeria. He called it Ulmus nitens var. italica, 'Mediterranean Elm'. The variety was accepted by Krüssman (1984), despite the wide source-area claimed for it, as a non-clonal cultivar, U. carpinifolia var. italicaHenry. Bean (1988), however, considered it "a variety of rather dubious standing", and it was ignored by Richens (1983), who listed instead a "small-leaved U. minor of Spain" and a "narrow-leaved U. minor of northern and central Italy", as well as "the densely hairy leaved U. minor of southern Italy", the latter being Ulmus minor subsp. canescens, formerly Melville's Ulmus canescens.
