For millennia, elm trees shaped our landscapes, our imaginations and our folklore, and then, they started dying.

For more than a century, a devastating pandemic has swept across continents, overwhelming scientific efforts to contain it. Dutch elm disease has wiped out hundreds of millions of trees worldwide, including over 25 million in the UK alone, reshaping entire landscapes. Today, few young people have ever stood beneath a mature elm, though these trees once dominated vast stretches of Europe and North America, their presence woven deeply into myth and story.

The Lost Elms is both an elegy and a story of resilience: a tribute to the elms we’ve nearly lost, and a compelling account of the long, painstaking battle to bring them back. The book follows the scientists racing to understand and slow the disease’s relentless spread, revealing how globalisation accelerates ecological catastrophe, how climate change and biosecurity failures compound the threat, and how elms form intricate, life-supporting relationships with countless other species.

Threaded throughout is a lyrical exploration of the elm’s cultural significance. Rooted in Greek, Celtic, Japanese, Germanic and Scandinavian mythologies, the elm has long been associated with death, transition and the supernatural. It stood as a ‘Liberty Tree’ during the American and French Revolutions, and its symbolic power echoes through centuries of storytelling.

Yet this is not only a tale of loss. New ecological insights show elms to be more resilient than once believed, offering glimmers of hope, not just for their own survival, but for how we might better protect other vulnerable species and the wider environment.