The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to Our Vanished Trees – and the Fight to Save Them

Fifty years ago, a deadly pandemic raged across the world, destroying all in its path and outmanoeuvring scientists’ desperate attempts to halt it. Dutch elm disease destroyed 25 million trees in the UK alone, altering our landscape forever. Few people now living have seen a mature elm tree, yet they once covered great swathes of Europe and North America and their legacy lives on in our mythology and folklore. The Lost Elms is a love letter to our vanished elms – the story of how we nearly lost an entire species, and the long, slow fight back. It tells the gripping story of the scientists desperately trying to halt the disease’s relentless progress, and demonstrates the deadly affect globalisation can have on the environment, the importance of biosecurity and the intricate ways in which trees are interlinked with other species. Woven throughout is a lyrical look at the elm’s central place in our history, culture and folklore – the elm features heavily in Greek, Celtic, Japanese, Germanic and Scandinavian mythology; as the ‘Liberty Tree’ it played a symbolic role in both the American and French Revolutions; and since ancient times the elm has held associations with death and the supernatural. However all is not lost: recent breakthroughs means some scientists now believe the elm is poised to make a comeback. This tree holds an important place in our history, and now might just offer the lesson for how we can save other disappearing species and our environment.