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Ulmus minor subsp. plotii
Also called Small Leaved Elm, European Field Elm, Field Elm, Smoothleaf Elm, Common Elm, English Cork Elm, English Elm
Ulmus minor 'Plotii' is a rare British cultivar of the field elm, a tall, narrow tree with a distinctive one-sided, ostrich-feather crown. It is mainly known from the East Midlands of England and is grown mostly as a conservation and collection tree, not a garden plant.
The field elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Plotii', commonly known as Lock elm or Lock's elm (its vernacular names), Plot's elm or Plot elm, and first classified as Ulmus sativa Mill. var. Lockii and later as Ulmus plotii by Druce in 1907-11 (see 'Etymology'), 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.
Plot-type elms had been noted as distinctive and were being cultivated in collections before they were botanically classified by Druce (1911), as evidenced by the two specimens at Westonbirt House (mature by 1912 when Augustine Henry photographed one of them for his Trees of Great Britain & Ireland) and the tree at Eastington Park. Melville confirmed by field studies in the 1930s that Druce's specimens were typical ('the type'), but believing plotii to be a species and so to some extent variable he also admitted to Kew 'Plot Elms' that varied from the type. Cultivation in the decades that followed, influenced by Melville or sourced from Kew, allowed similar latitude. Plot-like elms that he considered outside the range of his variable species were classified by Melville from the 1940s as Ulmus aff. plotii. Coleman, after his single-clone findings, adapted Melville's name to aff. 'Plotii'. These trees are very close to Plot elm and have a number of characteristics of the type, but their crowns are too broad and regular to match 'Plotii'.
Winged elm · American elm · Ulmus 'Androssowii' · Cedar elm · Wych Elm · European White Elm · Ulmus lanceifolia · Chinese elm · Siberian elm · Slippery elm · Rock elm · Elm
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ulmus minor 'Plotii' by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
