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

A Guardian 'Book of the day'

Winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for Nature Writing

Shortlisted for the 2025 Highland Book Prize

'A captivating book' - Independent
'Her enthusiasm is contagious.' - Guardian
'A meditation on life, culture and trees.' - FRED PEARCE
'Unofficial poet laureate of our woodlands.' - Scotsman

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For millennia,
elms shaped our landscape and our folklore;
then they started dying.

Few young people have seen a mature elm tree. They once covered great swathes of Europe and North America, but Dutch elm disease has since killed hundreds of millions worldwide, forever altering our landscapes.

The Lost Elms is a love letter to our nearly vanished elms and a rallying cry for their long, slow fight back. It tells the gripping story of the scientists desperately trying to halt the disease's relentless progress, and shares the latest research uncovering the intricate links between elms and other species. Woven throughout is a deeply lyrical look at the tree's central place in our history, mythology, poetry and folklore.

Crucially, there is hope. Recent breakthroughs reveal elms to be more resilient than we ever imagined. The Lost Elms shows how the strength of this noble tree can offer positive lessons for the future - lessons which one day might help us save other disappearing species.