''Ulmus minor'' 'Rueppellii' is a
Field Elm cultivar said to have been introduced to Europe from
Tashkent by the
Späth nursery The Späth (often spelt ''Spaeth'') family created one of the world's most notable plant nurseries of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The nursery had been founded in 1720 by Christoph Späth but removed to the erstwhile district of Baumschulen ...
,
Berlin.
Noted in 1881 as a 'new elm',
it was listed in Späth Catalogue 73, p. 124, 1888–89, and in subsequent catalogues, as ''Ulmus campestris Rueppelli'', and later by
Krüssmann as a cultivar.
Description
'Rueppellii' was a pyramidal tree with a single stem and numerous ascending branches forming a globose or ovoid crown, much like
'Umbraculifera'.
The branches are slightly corky, and the branchlets pubescent, bearing small leaves similar to those of the
Cornish Elm,
measuring long by wide, the surface likened to that of the wych elm ''
U. glabra
''Ulmus glabra'' Hudson, the wych elm or Scots elm, has the widest range of the European elm species, from Ireland eastwards to the Urals, and from the Arctic Circle south to the mountains of the Peloponnese and Sicily, where the species reaches i ...
''.
Pests and diseases
Most ''U. minor'' cultivars are susceptible to
Dutch elm disease, but, if not grafted, can survive through
root-sucker regrowth. Specimens planted in Poland suffered from
European elm scale.
Cultivation
No specimens are known to survive. Three specimens supplied by the
Späth nursery The Späth (often spelt ''Spaeth'') family created one of the world's most notable plant nurseries of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The nursery had been founded in 1720 by Christoph Späth but removed to the erstwhile district of Baumschulen ...
to the
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1902 as ''U. campestris'' 'Rueppelli' may survive in Edinburgh, as it was the practice of the Garden to distribute trees about the city (viz. the
Wentworth Elm).
The current list of Living Accessions held in the Garden ''per se'' does not list the plant.
Two specimens were grown at
Kew Gardens before the
First World War, obtained from the Barbier nursery,
France.
[ Republished 2004 Cambridge University Press, ] A specimen obtained from Späth before 1914, and planted in that year, stood in the
Ryston Hall
Ryston Hall, Ryston, Norfolk, England is a 17th-century country house built by Sir Roger Pratt for himself. The house was constructed between 1669 and 1672 in the Carolean style. In the late 18th century, John Soane made alterations to the hous ...
arboretum,
Norfolk, in the early 20th century.
'Rueppelli' was used in urban plantings in
Bydgoszcz
Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...
, Poland, in the 1920s.
It was marketed by the Hesse Nursery of
Weener, Germany, and by Dahs, Reuter & Co. of
Cologne, in the 1930s.
In North America, one tree was planted as ''U. campestris'' 'Rueppelli' in 1897 at the
Dominion Arboretum,
Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
, Canada.
In the US, ''Ulmus Rueppelli'', 'Rueppell's English Elm' (an error probably arising from the equating of ''U. campestris'' with
English Elm), a "handsome compact form, growing perfectly symmetrical without pruning", appeared in the 1902 catalogue of the Bobbink and Atkins nursery,
Rutherford, New Jersey.
Putative specimens
In Edinburgh, an unidentified suckering Field Elm cultivar found in Links Place,
Leith Links (2016), matches the description, leaf-drawing and herbarium specimen of 'Rueppellii',
bioportal.naturalis.nl
/ref> and may be one of Späth's three. Similar elms also appear in old photographs of Tashkent.
Etymology
Uncertain; the tree is probably named either for Julius Rüppell, owner of the Peter Smith & Co nursery in Hamburg during the latter part of the 19th century,[ or for the naturalist and explorer ]Eduard Rüppell
Wilhelm Peter Eduard Simon Rüppell (20 November 1794 – 10 December 1884) was a German Natural history, naturalist and List of explorers, explorer. Rüppell is occasionally transliterated to "Rueppell" for the English alphabet, due to german ort ...
.[
]
Accessions
None known.
References
{{Elm species, varieties, hybrids, hybrid cultivars and species cultivars , state=collapsed
Field elm cultivar
Ulmus articles with images
Ulmus
Missing elm cultivars
Ulmus Edinburgh Spath 1902