This tree is reputed wild, but there seems reason to think that this form, and certainly the U. campestris, has been introduced. One reason for this conclusion is that although the U. montana produces such an enormous amount of seed, yet, in as far as we know, none of this produces young trees, or, in other words, this elm does not appear to increase sporadically. Even in cultivation it is found to be exceedingly difficult to replenish our nursery stock from seed, and hence the cost of young plants, as they have to be produced from suckers, or otherwise layered, and occasionally grown from cuttings. Evelyn says:—
It seems to be so much more addicted to some places than to others, that I have frequently doubted whether it be a pure indigene or translatitious; and not only because I have hardly ever known any considerable woods of them (besides some few nurseries near Cambridge, planted, I suppose, for store), but most continually in tufts, hedge-rows, and mounds; and that Shropshire, and several other counties, have rarely any growing in many miles together.—Sylva, vol. i. p. 127.
To this may be added the fact that the most notable elm trees will usually be found at cross-roads—as Maul’s Elm at Cheltenham, nearly 40 feet in circumference, or about dwellings; the fine old trunk at the Slade Farm, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, as much as 50 feet, for some time hollow, and once used as a cider-mill; the fine elms in our parks, as at Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and others; and such avenues of elms as seen at Christchurch.
As a timber tree the Scotch elm is not esteemed so highly as is the English sort. To begin with, it does not grow such straight even balks; it is more gnarled and knotty in sawing, and more difficult to work. Selby says that Scottish writers have arrived at a different conclusion, which he conceives to have arisen from the fact that “their estimate has been drawn from a comparison of the wood of U. montana with that of U. suberosa (considered by them to be the English elm), which produces a soft, spongy wood, greatly inferior to most other trees of the genus.”
It is used for flooring and rough country work. The peculiar wen-like excrescences that one sometimes meets with on the sides of wych elms are carefully preserved and cut into veneers for fine loo-tables, work-boxes, and other purposes, when a peculiar mottled fine-coloured wood is required for fancy-work.
Some of the finest elms we have examined have been Maul’s elm, Piff’s elm, the Slade elm, before mentioned, and the following, measured at one and three feet from the ground.
| Circum. at 1 foot. | Circum. at 3 feet. | ||||
| Ulmus montana, | Oakley Park, Cirencester | 38 | 0 | 33 | 6 |
| Ditto, | Hyde Park | — | 20 | 6 | |
| Ditto, | Hyde Park | — | 20 | 0 | |
| Ditto, | group of twelve in Kensington Gardens, varying to | — | 20 | 0 | |
| Ulmus campestris, | Hyde Park, several varying from 20 ft. to | — | 30 | 0 | |
| Ditto, | in Oakley Park, from 15 ft. to | — | 22 | 0 | |