Beetles stem elms' lofty wartime canopy

Riseley, Bedfordshire Nissen huts stored ammunition here, hidden by tall elms whose offspring are just bushes, cursed with perpetual youth

American servicemen came in wartime with concrete and bombs to Coppice Wood. They paved the paths with cement and put up a parking lot - a series of wide bays with Nissen huts storing explosive shells. Chipped and cracked, this network of hard standing remains, though the army is long gone. So too the elms remain, the trees that hid the ammunition stores from enemy aircraft under their canopy.

The elms' descendants are cursed with perpetual youth. Always a bush, never a tree, seems to be the mantra, the leafy sprays doomed to shrivelled adolescence by Dutch elm disease. Only a few have made it to the heights.