The Field ElmcultivarUlmus minor 'Argenteo-Variegata' or simply 'Variegata', known in Australasia and North America as Silver Elm[1][2] or Tartan Elm,[3] is said to have been cultivated in France from 1772. Green noted that variegated forms of Field Elm "arise frequently, and several clones may have been known under this name".[4]Dumont de Courset (1802) listed an U. campestris var. glabra variegata,[5]Loudon (1838) an U. nitens var. variegata, and Wesmael (1863) an U. campestris var. nuda microphylla variegata.[6][7]
'Variegata' is not to be confused with the variegated English Elm cultivar, U. minor 'Atinia Variegata', which has the broader, almost orbicular leaves of the type.
Description
The tree's foliage is randomly blotched and speckled with creamy white, the colour of the leaves on the same tree ranging from almost completely cream to totally green.[8][9][10] In 1915 the horticulturalist E. A. Bowles described "a tall Silver Elm" at Myddleton House, his lifelong home at Bulls Cross in Enfield, Middlesex:
"In some seasons it is an absolutely silver pillar from top to toe, with more than half of every leaf pure milky white. Another year it will hardly show the variegation, and in yet another it may be spangled with minute silver specks all over the leaves, but with no large pure white markings. It turns to fine gold in some Novembers. I believe that it is in the seasons that it is greenest that it turns the finest autumn yellow. Mr. Elwes tells me that it is a very fine specimen of a variegated elm, and should have been figured for his great book[note 1] if he had seen it in time, and also that it is unusual in being on its own roots, whereas most of them are grafted. This one suckers up all over the lawn and in the adjacent flower beds, and reproduces all its vagaries of variegation in its offspring."[11]
Bowles' photograph and the name "Silver Elm" suggest that the Myddleton House tree was U. minor 'Variegata', rather than Variegated English Elm.
U. minor 'Variegata' foliage
Etymology
As the blotching and margination of the foliage may appear more silver than cream, the cultivar is sometimes listed as U. minor 'Argenteo-Variegata'.[12]
Henry cited Loudon's report that 'Variegata' was cultivated in Chiswick in the early 19th century.[13] The Späth nursery of Berlin supplied the Dominion Arboretum, Ottawa, Canada, with an U. campestris variegata argentea (1893) and an U. campestris fol. argenteis variegatis (1899), which may have been Silver Elm or Tartan Elm, as well as an U. campestris fol. argenteis marginatis (1897), possibly variegated English Elm.[14] An U. fol. argent. var. minor, a "small, silver, variegated variety", appeared in the 1902 catalogue of the Bobbink and Atkins nursery, Rutherford, New Jersey.[15] An Ulmus medio argentea variegata, "a pretty silver-variegated variety", probably Silver Elm, appeared in early 20th-century nursery catalogues in Australia.[16] Silver Elm remains in commercial cultivation in Europe, and is commonly cultivated in Australasia and North America, where a number of mature specimens survive (see under Accessions).
U. minor 'Variegata' grafted on to Ulmus glabra rootstock (photo Mihailo Grbić)
U. minor 'Variegata' in Sarphatipark, Amsterdam (2015)[17]
Ulmus campestris foliis variegatis: Loddiges, (Hackney, London), Catalogue 1820, p. 35, and by Loudon in Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, 3: 1395, 1838.
![U. minor 'Variegata' in Sarphatipark, Amsterdam (2015)[17]](File:Sarphatipark_@_De_Pijp_@_Amsterdam_(21965799505).jpg)
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