Wych Elm

Overview

Wych elm is named from the Old English *wice*, meaning pliant or flexible, referring to the supple young branches. The word has no connection to witch in its original meaning, but the phonetic resemblance drew the supernatural associations in anyway, and by the seventeenth century the tree had accumulated a full set of witch-related folklore that was probably not there to begin with and was certainly there by the time anyone thought to write it down. It is the larger of the two native British elms, and unlike the English elm it does reproduce from seed rather than suckers, which gave it marginally more resistance to Dutch elm disease when it arrived in the twentieth century and proceeded to remove the elm from most of the British landscape.

Botanical Notes

A large deciduous tree to 40 metres, with a broad, irregular crown, dark fissured bark, and large, rough-hairy, asymmetric leaves, 7–16cm, with a double-toothed margin and an unequal base — one side of the leaf reaching significantly further down the stalk than the other. Flowers appear before the leaves in February to March: small, reddish-purple, in dense clusters. Fruit a notched, papery samara, 2–3cm, with the seed near the centre, produced in profusion and ripening by May. Found in woodland, hedgerows, and ravines throughout Britain and Europe, preferring moist, calcareous soils; particularly associated with upland stream valleys in the north and west, where it has persisted better than in the south. The timber is tough, resistant to water and splitting, and was the preferred wood for wheel hubs, coffin boards, and longbows before yew became dominant.

Lore & History

In Scottish Highland tradition, elm was one of the trees associated with the fairy world — not as a protective species but as one that the fairies inhabited, which is a different and more dangerous relationship. Cutting an elm without proper permission was considered risky; the tree might take its own revenge, or the inhabitants might take it for you. The bark was used in Scots folk medicine for skin eruptions and eczema, a use recorded consistently enough across different traditions to suggest genuine empirical observation. The timber was specifically valued for wheel nave-holes — the hub through which the axle passes — because it does not split under the repeated compression of that application; it was also the standard wood for water pipes before metal became common, because it lasts well when continuously wet. Coffin boards of elm appear in archaeological contexts from the Bronze Age onward in Britain.

Warnings