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Plant of the Month: August 2018

Jacqueline Hillier Elm

Ulmus 'Jacqueline Hillier'

= Ulmus x hollandica 'Jacqueline Hillier'

= Ulmus x elegantissima 'Jacqueline Hillier'

= Ulmus minor 'Jacqueline Hillier'

= Ulmus parvifolia 'Jacqueline Hill'

ULMACEÆ ; Elm Family

Elms in general, as they grow wild anyway, are open, airy trees. They vary from coarse leaved to fine, and their branching can also be lumpy and loutish in aspect, or graceful, elegant and refined. Most elms are deciduous, with yellow fall color. A few are semi- or fully evergreen, and a few sport orange, red or purple fall color. Some cultivars are dwarf, some are dense, some weeping strongly, or corky-barked, variegated, and so on. No elms are prized for floral beauty, because their flowers are tiny and insignificant ornamentally. Their flat, wafer-like seeds are more noticed by far, and upon ripening, fly all over the place before littering the ground.

The second edition of my book Trees of Seattle includes 17 different kinds of Ulmus. In my plant-of-the-month feature of October 2008 (http://www.arthurleej.com/p-o-m-Oct08.html), I describe 5 elm cultivars in Seattle not featured in the book.

Now, I add yet another elm in Seattle, not in my book, that is in my judgement undeservedly rare

Jacqueline Hillier elm is a slow, dense, clone, discovered in Selly Park, Birmingham, England in 1966, and named by Roy Lancaster for a daughter-in-law of nurseryman Sir Harold Hillier. Jacqueline Hillier elm is ideal for bonsai or hedging. It is European, and yet less susceptible to Dutch Elm Disease than most European elms. I left it out of my tree books because it was described as a shrub. But I have seen tree-sized specimens. It is really just a much congested version of a full size tree, in this regard like a dwarf peach tree or nectarine tree.

In the UK, specimens have been measured over 25 feet tall, with trunks to a foot and a half thick. I have seen specimens in Washington and Oregon that are similar, though two other Seattle specimens were cut down before I could measure them. For one such, I show a photo from 2009.

Left unpruned, the Jacqueline Hillier Elm may be a crude massive shrub, wider than tall. But if its lower branches are pruned, and some (or even most) of its density reduced, then it can be most winsome in appearance. The small, dark green, rough textured leaves are in neat tight rows. In winter, its herringbone twig tracery is fetching.

In at least one case, likely more, the clone has been misidentified as Ulmus parviflora 'Hokkaido' --a much smaller clone, with very rugged, dark, corky bark. 'Seiju' and 'Coticosa' are similar Ulmus parviflora clones. Far Reaches Farm sells the real Jacqueline Hillier elm, mail-order, as 1-gallon plants.

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