It’s late August and my team and I are headed into Gleann na Ciche (a lesser known side glen at the West End of Affric) to make a start on a small but very important project involving Wych Elm (Ulmus glabra). But firstly let’s take a closer look at this species and the troubles it has faced in recent decades….

Description

Wych Elm, also known as ‘Scotch’ or ‘Scots Elm’ on occasion, is a native decidous tree species with a wide ranging distribution from Norway to down to Sicily and from Ireland across to the Ural mountains. It can be a montane species growing at elevations up to 1500 metres in Europe and is by far the dominant species in elm forests in Scandinavia. In the British Isles it is more common in the North and West and was most common in the lowlands of Scotland. It is also the only elm species being 100% confirmed as native as the English Elm (Ulmus procera) is thought to have been introduced during the bronze age.

It can be a large tree, up to 40 metres tall, but in Scotland the tallest Wych Elm is recorded at just 25.2 metres. They can reportedly live up to 400 years but most Wych Elm remaining here are much younger than that (not including the tree that’s the focus of this blog post!) As mentioned earlier it was more common in the lowlands of Scotland and doesn’t form a major component of the Caledonian Pinewoods or Atlantic Rainforest, however, it is widely distributed and can grow as far North as Sutherland and as a tree on it’s own supports a high level of biodiversity.

In terms of reproduction, Wych elm is similar to Hazel (Corylus avellana) in that it’s purple flowers appear in early Spring before the leaves emerge. The Wych elm as a species is monoecious meaning it has both male and female reproductive parts on the same tree (the opposite of this being dioecious). This is important to our story here as it means it cannot self-pollinate and needs another invidual within a suitable distance of wind dispersal to do so.

Etymology

The word ‘wych’ comes from the Old English word wice, meaning pliant or supple, in relation to the properties of it’s timber as it bends very easily and was used in boat building, cart wheels and even the ‘caman’ (a curved stick used in the traditional sport of shinty)

The Gaelic word for Wych Elm is ‘leamhan’ which gives it’s name to Loch Leven in Kinross. Loch Lomond is also thought to be a corrupted version of ‘Lac Leaman’ and has been intrepreted by some folk as ‘Lake of the Elms’ although I’m less convinced!

The Last Ent of Affric

So what makes this lonely, ancient tree in Gleann na Ciche so special? Well, just that! There are no other recorded Wych Elm in Glen Affric and it is many kilometres away from the next nearest tree of the same species. It is sitting in an unusal growing location and is thought to be centuries old. This means that it must have been part of an ancient woodland (present since at least 1750 which this tree easily could have been) where Wych elm must have been more abundant to allow cross pollination and seed production OR this tree was planted by someone.

Now we always think of these places as remote but many of these Highland glens were lived in by people and there were several settlements scattered throughout them, Glen Affric included. In fact Glen Affric would have been a busy crossroads at certain times of the year for people moving between West and East coasts and North and South from Glen Cluanie. So, could someone have planted this unusual species (for this location) out on a prominent location to mark a special occasion? I guess we’ll never know!

In 2019 this tree won the award for Scotland’s ‘Tree of the year’ and was designated a Tree of Nation Special Interest (TNSI) by the Woodland Trust. It was nominated by a colleague of mine at the time and referred to as the ‘Last Ent of Affric’ in reference to Tolkien’s tree folk of middle earth. Just to be clear, I wasn’t involved in the naming process! The tree then subsquently became a type of figurehead in the efforts to fight Dutch Elm Disease which I’ll explain a bit more about next…

Dutch Elm Disease (DED)

This disease was first indentified by phytopathologists in the Netherlands (hence the name) in the early 1920s and is believed to have entered the UK in the 1960s on imported logs from North America. Over the next decade it decimated English Elm in the Southern half of the UK and since then has steadily travelled North and West killing off the majority of all Elms (including Wych) across the country. The disease has had a significant impact on woodlands where Elms were present and the biodiversity associated with them as the Ulmus genus has essentially been removed from much of the landscape completely.

DED is a fungal disease caused by the fungus Ophiostoma novo-ulmi and it’s spores are spread by various species of elm bark beetles that bore into the bark of the tree. The fungus then takes hold and affects the tree’s vascular system and disrupts the transport of nutrients and water which eventually leads to death.

Over the decades work to stop the spread of the disease has largely failed and instead research has focused on finding and assessing disease resistant elm trees instead which carries us nicely onto the final part of this blog post…

The Project

At the start of 2023 myself and some colleagues were discussing the elm. We talked how this sunique tree is nearing the end of it’s life and whether we could, or should, attempt to cross polinate it to produce seed that we could then grow on and eventually plant the seedlings back out in the glen. We just decided to have a go. The location of the elm doesn’t make it easy to monitor it closely to identify the best window for attempting to polinate and long story short we failed!

Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I was contacted by Emma at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). She explained that she has undertaking a three year project looking at ten native Scottish species that were at risk of extinction or under threat. Five of those species are trees and includes looking at Wych Elm in conjunction with the University of Highlands & Islands (UHI). One of the aims of the project is to propagate disease resistant seedlings to then plant out at suitable translocation sites. Hopefully in time we would see some cross pollination between the seedlings but maybe even with the mature elm too if it manages to hang on long enough. Essentially the same idea we had earlier but in a much more professional and organised manner!

As I look around at my team putting on head nets and smothering themselves in smidge I realise I may have picked a bad day to come out here. There’s not a breath of wind in the air and it’s an absolute midge fest! A classic late summer West Highland day. We are here with as much fencing material as we could transport in one trip to erect a new small enclosure around the existing elm which will help to protect the newly planted seedlings when the time comes. Today we will choose the fenceline and get the materials onto site, which isn’t easy with several trips in the Argo Cat ATV required. We completed our mission for the day and my team will be back again soon to start work on erecting the fence.

Work has already taken place on the RBGE project and they hope to have 250 disease resistant Wych Elm seedlings available for planting this Autumn, 50 of which will be planted in this Gleann na Ciche enclosure. The trees will be individually recorded and monitored closely from the time of planting. All being well we will have 50 new Wych Elm saplings in Gleann na Ciche by the end of the year!

If you have any questions or comments please leave them below or send me an email using the contact form.

Thanks for reading!

Sources

https://www.rbge.org.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulmus_glabra

https://treesforlife.org.uk/into-the-forest/trees-plants-animals/trees/elm/

https://forestryandland.gov.scot/blog/tree-of-the-year

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/tree-pests-and-diseases/key-tree-pests-and-diseases/dutch-elm-disease/