Commentary- doi: 10.3832/ifor1244-008 ©iForest – Biogeosciences and Forestry

The elm, tree of milk and wine The story I am going to tell started in the Himalaya in 1960. In the preceding years I had tried to collect additional basic material for our elm breeding project which was star-ted back in 1927 by Christine Buisman, con-tinued after her death in 1936 by Johanna Went, from whom I took it over in 1953. I collected budwood from good-looking sur-viving elms mainly in France, England, Ire-land and Holland, hoping some might have a useful degree of resistance to the disease but also resistance to sea wind, which we need in our elms. Thereby we got experience in sending budwood home by mail in fall an