Ulmus 'Camperdownii'

Ulmus cultivar
Camperdown Elm, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City.
Cultivar	'Camperdownii'
Origin	Scotland

Ulmus 'Camperdownii', the Camperdown Elm, is a cultivar which cannot reproduce from seed. About 1835–1840 (often mis-stated as '1640'), the Earl of Camperdown’s head forester, David Taylor, discovered a young contorted elm (a sport) growing in the forest at Camperdown House, in Dundee, Scotland. The young tree was lifted and replanted within the gardens of Camperdown House where it remains to this day. The original tree, which grows on its own roots, is less than 3 m tall, with a weeping habit and contorted branch structure. The earl's gardener is said to have produced the first of what are commonly recognised as Camperdown elms by grafting a cutting to the trunk of a wych elm (U. glabra).

Henry and Bean record that in early days both 'Camperdownii' and a reportedly similar-looking cultivar called 'Serpentina' were marketed as U. montana pendula nova.Koch had listed an U. serpentina in 1872, and an U. montana serpentina was marketed in the late 19th century and early 20th by the Späth nursery in Berlin and by the Ulrich nursery in Warsaw. In Späth catalogues between 1902 and 1920, 'Serpentina' appears while 'Camperdownii' is absent; by 1930 'Camperdownii' appears but 'Serpentina' is absent. This suggests that 'Serpentina' may have been a continental name for 'Camperdownii', and that Späth dropped the name 'Serpentina' c.1930 in favour of 'Camperdownii'. Elwes and Henry's failure to mention the serpentining branches of 'Camperdownii' may have contributed to the impression of two different trees. In this omission they were followed by Bean (1925; corrected 1981), Green (1964), Hillier (1972– 2002),Krüssmann (1976), and White (2003), the first four of whom, like Elwes and Henry, list 'Serpentina' as a cultivar distinct from 'Camperdownii'.