The Queen is rumored to have many secret possessions sequestered away in the vaults of her many, many properties – a collection of Da Vinci’s original sketches, for example. Her Majesty even possesses objects believed long gone that she and nobody else knew existed. In this case, it is a tree, growing and flourishing in a world where all of its cousins were no longer standing proudly beneath the nurturing sun. The tree is called a Wentworth Elm growing and minding its own business in the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital. The Wentworth Elm was a casualty of Dutch Elm Disease, where fungi spread by the elm bark beetle, ravaged the elm population in the UK during the 70s and 80s.
The rather, one would think, unavoidable find, was spotted by scientists from Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden. “Such a discovery when the trees in question are just shy of 100 feet and in plain sight does sound rather odd,” said Dr. Max Coleman. The trees arrived from Germany in 1902 by unknown means and botanists are thinking up ways to spread the species, suspected as being the only remaining Wentworth Elms in Europe.
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