PICTURES: Lochinver Primary School pupils help plant wych elm seedlings at Little Assynt Tree Nursery in project to protect endangered local trees and propogate new ones
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Forty-three people gathered at the Little Assynt Tree Nursery near Lochinver last Thursday, to plant elms, writes Dr Many Haggith of the Culag Community Woodland Trust.
Elms are important in Assynt because it is the last refuge from Dutch elm disease, which has devastated elms everywhere else in mainland Britain and most other parts of the world.
Local people, led by the Culag Community Woodland Trust, are keen to ensure that elms have the best possible chance of surviving in the area by protecting existing elms and propagating and planting young trees widely across the landscape.
Genetic diversity is key to the future of elms, and the local project has teamed up with endangered plant specialists at the Royal Botanic Garden who are breeding elms from the few trees in southern Scotland that have survived the disease.
Their seedlings will be planted in Assynt along with many seedlings from local elms in hope that some of these trees will prove resistant to the disease. The event on January 25 included a ceremonial planting of the first of these potentially resistant seedlings.
The planting involved 22 children from Lochinver Primary School and 21 adults representing various local organisations (Culag Community Woodland Trust, Assynt Field Club, Assynt Foundation, Scottish Woodland Trust, John Muir Trust) and other interested local people.
As well as the school teachers, key helpers were Andy Summers, senior ranger for Highland High Life, Kat Martin, local artist and conservation officer for John Muir Trust, Nick Clooney and Josie Gibberd who run the Little Assynt Community Tree Nursery, and Max Coleman from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
The event and the whole project has been made possible by funding from Scottish Forestry and John Muir Trust.
Before planting the trees, Max Coleman explained the importance of elm. We formed a symbolic seven-metre circle around the precious seedling he had brought, imagining how huge it might become if it grows as big as the Brahan elm, which lived not far from here (about 80 miles) and was Britain's largest elm until it died in 2021. Then Kat Martin led the process of making some portraits of the elms.
Together with the special resilient sapling, 19 other elm tree saplings grown from local seed, were planted in the field next to the nursery.
The nursery has been growing elm from local seed for a number of years now and these are distributed to other new woodlands in the area locally, as part of our ongoing woodland restoration work, particularly on community land. Some also go to local private landowners, crofters and gardeners.
Later this year more of the potentially resilient saplings will be planted out on two specially selected sites in Assynt, one privately owned, one community owned. We will be holding more events on the ecology and uses of elms to help raise awareness of this important tree.
We are keen to hear ideas from local people about how we can protect our elms, and encourage everyone to get to learn how to recognise elms and keep their eyes open for any signs of disease.
If people have elm logs in their firewood stores, we encourage them to burn them before spring in case they are harbouring disease. Dutch elm disease is a fungus spread by a beetle that can overwinter as eggs or larvae under bark.
For more information, contact Mandy Haggith (hag@mandyhaggith.net) 07734235704
or info@culagwoods.co.uk
