Ulmus pumila 'Pinnato-ramosa'

The Siberian elm cultivar Ulmus pumila 'Pinnato-ramosa' was raised by Georg Dieck, as Ulmus pinnato-ramosa, at the National Arboretum, Zöschen, Germany, from seed collected for him circa 1890 in the Ili valley, Turkestan (then a region of the Russian Empire, now part of Kazakhstan) by the lawyer and amateur naturalist Vladislav E. Niedzwiecki while in exile there. Litvinov (1908) treated it as a variety of Siberian elm, U. pumila var. arborea but this taxon was ultimately rejected by Green, who sank the tree as a cultivar: "in modern terms, it does not warrant recognition at this rank but is a variant of U. pumila maintained and known only in cultivation, and therefore best treated as a cultivar". Herbarium specimens confirm that trees in cultivation in the 20th century as U. pumila L. var. arborea Litv. were no different from 'Pinnato-ramosa' (see 'External links').

'Pinnato-ramosa' is one of a number of elms that have at various times been called 'Turkestan Elm'. That name has also been applied to dense-branched Central Asian elms like U. densa and 'Androssowii', to U. turkestanica Regel (which Elwes and Henry confused with 'Pinnato-ramosa' in their Synonymy list but which Regel himself had regarded as a form of field elm), and to U. minor 'Umbraculifera' (which Green considered synonymous with Ulmus turkestanica Regel, naming it U. 'Turkestanica'). The Späth nursery of Berlin, Kew Gardens, and the Arboretum national des Barres treated U. turkestanica Regel as a cultivar distinct from U. pinnato-ramosa and 'Umbraculifera'.