April - English Elm

Some of the elm buds seem to be swelling - assuming it is not a Big Bud Mite that I know nothing about!

Notice the bristly hairy stem, and the purple-red buds, slightly "fringed" at the tips:

In the next two pictures you can see one new fresh green leaf in each bud just starting to escape from their respective overlying bud scales, in each case fairly low down on the bud:

In this picture of a rapidly opening bud, you can see two buds at the same node - not opposite I don't think, just at the one leaf scar:

I'm pretty sure this is the so-called English Elm, or as known from Wikipedia, the Atinian Elm: "Ulmus procera Salisb., now known as Ulmus minor var. procera or var. vulgaris, the English, Common, or more lately Atinian, Elm was, before the advent of Dutch elm disease, one of the largest and fastest-growing deciduous trees in Europe. A survey of genetic diversity in Spain, Italy and the UK revealed that the English Elms are genetically identical, clones of a single tree, the Atinian Elm once widely used for training vines, and brought to the British Isles by Romans for the purpose of supporting and training vines. Thus, despite its name, the origin of the tree is widely believed to be from Italy, although it is possible it hailed from what is now Turkey, where it is still used in the cultivation of raisins."