Ulmus boissieri

Description

Ulmus boissieri Grudz., (Persian: نارون برگ‌ریز or نارون گل‌پشه‌ای‎), a disputed species of elm found in Iran, was identified by Grudzinskaya in 1977. She equated her "new species" with the U. campestris f. microphylla collected in 1859 in Kerman Province and described in his Flora Orientalis (1879) by Boissier, for whom she named it, treating Boissier's specimen as the "type". The tree is endemic the provinces of Kermanshah (Qasr-e Shirin, Bisotun) and Kerman., and also the Zagros forests, growing with Quercus brantii, Celtis australis, Platanus orientalis, Fraxinus sp., and Cerasus mehaleb. Though two more recent Iranian treatises maintain the original taxon, Richens (1983), in line with Boissier's original U. campestris identification, sank U. boissieri as Ulmus minor, along with six other elms considered species by Soviet botanists. Grudzinskaya (1977) incorrectly stated that "U. boissieri was described by Boissier in the rank of a species". Boissier had in fact listed his small-leaved Persian elm as a form of the species, U. campestris. Grudzinskaya (1977) does not refer to the diagnostic field-elm feature of root-suckering.