Ulmus × hollandica 'Major' is a distinctive cultivar that in England came to be known specifically as the Dutch Elm, although all naturally occurring Field Elm Ulmus minor × Wych Elm U. glabra hybrids are loosely termed 'Dutch elm' (U. × hollandica). It is also known by the cultivar name 'Hollandica'. Nellie Bancroft considered 'Major' either an F2 hybrid or a backcrossing with one of its parents. According to Richens the tree was a native of Picardy and northern France, where it was known from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries as ypereau or ypreau. 'Major' was said to have been introduced to England from the Netherlands in the late seventeenth century as a fashion-elm associated with William and Mary, the name 'Dutch Elm' having been coined by Queen Mary's resident botanist Dr Leonard Plukenet. The epithet 'Major' was first adopted by Smith in Sowerby's English Botany 36: t. 2542, published in 1814, identifying the tree as Ulmus major. Krüssmann formally recognized the tree as the cultivar U. × hollandica 'Major' in 1962. Richens (1983) states that Elwes and Henry in their account of Dutch Elm (1913) "confused Dutch Elm with English". He gives no evidence but can only have been referring to Henry's statement that "in many districts ['Major'] is the commonest tree in hedgerows". Richens was writing seventy years after Henry, after a Dutch elm disease epidemic, two world wars, and decades of urbanisation and road-widening. Henry's statement was not necessarily a case of misidentification – or an exaggeration. Elwes and Henry's account of Dutch Elm remains a pioneering one. Description In areas unaffected by Dutch elm disease, 'Major' often attains a height of > 30 m, with a short bole and irregular, wide-spreading branches. In open-grown specimens, the canopy is less dense than that of the English elm or Wych elm. The bark of the trunk is dark and deeply fissured and, like English elm, forms irregular 'plates' in mature specimens, serving to distinguish it from the Huntingdon Elm (latticed bark), the other commonly planted U. × hollandica in the UK. The leaves are oval, < 12 cm long by 7 cm wide, the top surface dark green and glossy, with a long serrated point at the apex. The red apetalous, perfect, wind-pollinated flowers are produced in spring in large clusters of up to 50. The obovate samarae are up to 25 mm long by 18 mm broad.