Ulmus wallichiana Planch.

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Ulmus wallichiana' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/ulmus/ulmus-wallichiana/). Accessed 2024-10-11.

Genus

Synonyms

  • U. erosa Wall. Cat., not Roth

Glossary

inflorescence
Flower-bearing part of a plant; arrangement of flowers on the floral axis.
acuminate
Narrowing gradually to a point.
acute
Sharply pointed.
apex
(pl. apices) Tip. apical At the apex.
axillary
Situated in an axil.
ciliate
Fringed with long hairs.
clone
Organism arising via vegetative or asexual reproduction.
convex
Having a rounded surface.
glabrous
Lacking hairs smooth. glabrescent Becoming hairless.
glandular
Bearing glands.
inflorescence
Flower-bearing part of a plant; arrangement of flowers on the floral axis.
orbicular
Circular.
ovate
Egg-shaped; broadest towards the stem.
perianth
Calyx and corolla. Term used especially when petals and sepals are not easily distinguished from each other.
petiole
Leaf stalk.
serrate
With saw-like teeth at edge. serrulate Minutely serrate.
variety
(var.) Taxonomic rank (varietas) grouping variants of a species with relatively minor differentiation in a few characters but occurring as recognisable populations. Often loosely used for rare minor variants more usefully ranked as forms.

References

There are no active references in this article.

Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Ulmus wallichiana' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/ulmus/ulmus-wallichiana/). Accessed 2024-10-11.

A tree to 100 ft in the wild; branchlets slender, downy at first, becoming glabrous and dull brown or yellowish brown; buds narrowly ovate, acute, the scales ciliate and with some down on the back. Leaves three to five on the short shoots, more or less elliptic, acuminate at the apex, slightly unequal at the base, the larger leaves 238 to 5 in. long, 1 to 238 in. wide, slightly scabrid above, sparsely to densely downy beneath, with small axillary tufts, margins doubly serrate, the teeth convex on the back, with one to three secondary teeth; lateral veins in fifteen to seventeen pairs on the larger leaves; petiole up to 38 in. long, downy. Flowers before the leaves; inflorescence with a distinct central axis up to about 12 in. long, which, like the pedicels, is densely hairy; perianth-segments five or six, hairy on the back and at the edge. Samaras orbicular to obovate, slightly hairy to almost glabrous; seed at the centre.

Native of the Himalaya, from Kashmir to Nepal. In Kashmir it overlaps with U. villosa (q.v.), which has short shoots with more numerous leaves, these not much more than 4 in. long, acute or gradually acuminate and more evenly biserrate, the serrations not convex on the outside and with three to seven secondary teeth. In var. tomentosa Melville and Heybroek the buds, young branchlets and leaf-undersides are more densely hairy and the samaras uniformly hairy on the surface and at the margins.

subsp. xanthoderma Melville & Heybroek – Branchlets becoming orange-or yellow-brown, glandular at first, not hairy. Inflorescence slightly glandular, almost glabrous. Samaras with a few glandular hairs. Of more western distribution than subsp. wallichiana, from Afghanistan to Kashmir. For a comment on this variety, see Flora Iranica, Part 142 (1979), p. 4.

U. wallichiana is in cultivation in Britain, but little known. Its chief importance would appear to be as a possible source of genetic factors for resistance to Dutch elm disease. The clone introduced to Holland from the Arnold Arboretum in 1930 proved tender, but its offspring showed promising characters and in 1960 Dr H. M. Heybroek of the Forest Research Station ‘De Dorschkamp’ at Wageningen visited the Himalaya to collect hardier provenances. See further in Melville and Heybroek, op. cit., pp. 5, 8–14, on which this account is based.