Seven Women and a Diseased Elm

May 1995. The harsh whining of chain saws pierces the air of the sleepy neighbourhood. The Parks and Public Gardens Department has started work bright and early and two men are sawing down a twenty-metre high elm in an enclosed garden in the western district of Amsterdam. Hanging from ropes like mountaineers, the men slice off the tree's branches one by one, each time with a single sweep of the saw. The lopped branches swish down to the ground below. A few hours later, the colossus has been reduced to a pathetic stump. The houses on the other side of the square suddenly seem a few metres closer.

A furious resident phones the local authority. The elm was diseased, the official explains amicably, and there is no cure for elm disease. Only by chopping the tree down and removing it can you prevent the disease spreading or – more important still in a dense residential neighbourhood – make sure that the tree will not come thundering down of its own accord, toppled by strong winds.

Local residents had not even noticed anything wrong with the tree. How you can tell that an elm is diseased actually? ‘It's an insidious process’, explains Doekle Elgersma, plant pathologist at the University of Amsterdam. The first symptoms appear in the spring. The leaves on the youngest twigs wither and become discoloured, as if autumn has already come. Then they die. Some fall to the ground, and others stay hanging in the tree like little dead flags. Then, in the summer, bare patches appear in the full green crown of the tree. The patches are bigger the following year, and bigger still the year after, until the doomed tree is eventually completely bare. By then it won't take much to blow it down. The entire process of death can last as long as much as ten years.

Elgersma suddenly demands: ‘Did you know that this disease is called ‘Dutch elm disease’ all over the world because the most important discoveries about elm disease were made by seven Dutch scientists? And that all seven were women?’