2 March: Elms

In the French Revolutionary Calendar today is the Day of the Elm Tree. Here are ten things you might not know about elm trees:

1. There are about 30-40 species of elm including the English Elm, Wych Elm, American elm and Dutch elm. They belong to the family Ulmacaea and the suborder urticalean rosids, which means they are they are distantly related to cannabis, mulberries, Figs, hops, and Nettles.

2. There’s even a specific name for botanists who study elm trees: "pteleologists", from the Greek word for elm.

3. Mature trees grow to 30m and can live for more than 100 years. The Preston Twins in Preston Park, Brighton are the two oldest English elms in the world, aged over 400 years.

4. The fruit of the elm is a samara, that is a tiny seed with wings which are dispersed by wind.

5. Elm wood is strong and resistant to splitting. Hence it has been used to make wagon wheels, the keels of ships, bows and Japanese Taiko Drums. Hesiod says that ploughs in Ancient Greece were also made partly of elm. The first written references to elm occur in the Linear B lists of military equipment at Knossos in the Mycenaean Period, when the wood was used to make chariots.

6. The wood is also resistant to decay if permanently wet. Elm was used as piers in the construction of the original London Bridge.

7. During the great famine of 1812 the people of rural Norway lived on boiled strips of elm bark. The seeds are particularly nutritious, containing 45% crude protein, and less than 7% fibre by dry mass.

8. Elms are under threat from Dutch elm disease, which is transmitted by a small beetle that lives in the bark It is illegal to transport elm firewood because of the risk of spreading the disease.

9. In the Bach Flower remedy system, elm is the remedy for people suffering a temporary loss of confidence due to the overwhelming amount of responsibility they have taken on.

10. The Langton Elm in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, was a large elm tree that "was for a long time so remarkable as to have a special keeper", according to a book published in 1881.