Concept

Ulmus 'Berardii'

Summary
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Berardii', Berard's Elm, was raised in 1865, as Ulmus Berardi, from seeds collected from large specimens of "common elm" growing on the ramparts at Metz, by an employee of the Simon-Louis nursery named Bérard. Carrière (1887), the Späth nursery of Berlin and the Van Houtte nursery of Gentbrugge regarded it as form of a Field Elm, listing it as U. campestris Berardii, the name used by Henry. Cheal's nursery of Crawley distributed it as Ulmus nitens [:Ulmus minor] 'Berardii'. Smith's of Worcester preferred the original, non-specific name, Ulmus 'Berardii' (1888 catalogue). As with 'Koopmannii', 'Berardii' is treated in some north Eurasian treatises (for example, Krüssmann, 1984) as a cultivar of the Siberian Elm Ulmus pumila. Green, who had examined dried specimens of the plant, also considered it "as possibly a form of U. pumila". A much re-labelled 1820s' herbarium specimen from the Baikal region of Siberia (one conjecture was "U. siberica var. pumila ?") in the Museum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris, shows 'Berardii'-type leaves, suggesting the possibility of a French cultivation in the early 19th century of a small-leaved U. pumila, later called 'Berardii'. Siberian elms with 'Berardii'-like leaves are present in Russia. No tree-photographs of 'Berardii' are known, and descriptions of the cultivar vary. It is said to make a bushy shrub or small tree, but these descriptions date from the early decades of its cultivation, and the parent tree was large. Krüssmann and Green state that it has slender upright branches, whereas Späth described the branches as "overhanging". A 1956 herbarium specimen at the Arboretum national des Barres, Nogent-sur-Vernisson, France, describes the source tree as 5 m tall with hanging branches (it includes a small pencil sketch). The leaves have been described as very small, very dark green (almost black), and glabrous, 12–18 mm long. Some herbarium specimens, however, show leaves up to 4 or 5 cm long, with 1 cm petioles, while Bean gives 1.5 to 4 cm long by 0.
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