Few surviving English elm trees in rapid decline
By Mark Seddon
Saturday, 21 August 2010 00:16 UK A fresh outbreak of Dutch elm disease is threatening the existence of the UK’s remaining English elm trees. … They were wiped out in their many millions from the 1970s, when a virulent strain of a fungal disease arrived on imported Canadian logs and fanned out from ports in Bristol, Southampton and London killing between 25-30 million trees. Dutch elm disease, named because much of the research into it was conducted in Holland, soon overwhelmed the English elm, a tree that once towered over our hedgerows. … Aside from East Sussex and the Isle of Man, the only recorded English elm survivors in Britain are two remarkable trees in an isolated spot in the Cotswolds, and an old tree that graces a graveyard near Dervaig on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. But this has been a very bad year for Dutch elm disease, possibly one of the worst since the mid 1970s. To the east of Brighton, in the beautiful elm landscapes of the South Downs, almost every hedgerow is showing the tell tale signs of the disease; yellowing and browning leaves, and rapid die back. The once relatively disease-free Friston Forest is riddled with Dutch elm disease, and it is spreading rapidly. … The Forestry Commission told Newsnight that it is about to send more teams in to tackle the outbreak that threatens elms – not only in the forest – but in an immediate seven-mile radius. But it also says that the future is not bright for a healthy elm population in the Friston Forest area. …
