Elm on the Edge

The story of the wych elm trees in the Bovey Valley Woods has reached its final chapter. The volunteers of the East Dartmoor National Nature Reserve began the adventure began back in 2016 when a hunt for the diminished population of elms took a painstakingly methodical route through the woods to find these elusive trees. The first stage of the project required the individual trees to be found, assessed for health, recorded and plotted on a map because, before this time, nobody knew how many trees stood in the woods of the Bovey Valley after the ravages of Dutch Elm Disease. Wych elm leaves

Read about the initial stage of the elm tree project here

To conserve the wych elm species, a bagful of seeds was taken away to try out some different propagation techniques. Elm tree seeds are notorious for their very low rate of viability; from a handful of seed, only a few will germinate so a bag stuffed with thousands of seeds was taken away for trials. Two years later, around twenty small trees had germinated and grown to a reasonable size for planting out in the woods.

by Matt Parkins