The fragmented afterlives of plants: Protecting Elm trees from disease in Brighton

Weldon, James 2025. The fragmented afterlives of plants: Protecting Elm trees from disease in Brighton. Agoriad 2 (1) 10.18573/agoriad.21

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Abstract

The main contribution of this paper is to highlight the need for a conceptualisation of plant life that persists after the process of fragmentation, and therefore, is not restricted to the whole. I make this point through an examination of the ways fragments of elm trees lost to Dutch Elm Disease continue to circulate in Brighton, posing a threat to the management of the city’s remaining elm. This fragmentation is caused by the coming together of the elm bark beetle (Scolytus scolytus and Scolytus multistriatus) and a fungus (Ophiostoma novo-ulmi) that causes the death of elm trees. While Dutch Elm Disease killed most of the UK’s elm, Brighton’s remaining trees are protected as the most significant mature elm population in the UK. Following McFarlane’s work attending to fragments as ‘overlooked bits and pieces’ (McFarlane 2021: 63), I highlight how fragments of once valued elm wholes are variously valued and unvalued, discarded and salvaged, ignored and attended to. Elm logs and regenerating elm suckers are a persistent presence in this urban space, both aiding the spread of disease and resulting in the need for continued protection of the city’s elm. These fragments of elm illustrate how plants continue to shape urban space after the death of the whole. This persistence, resulting from the ways plant bodies are radically different from animal bodies, confuses neat binaries between part/whole and life/death.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Cardiff University Press
ISSN:	2976-8578
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 October 2025
Date of Acceptance:	5 September 2025
Last Modified:	13 Nov 2025 15:38
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/181614

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