[1] 'Christine Buisman' was selected from a batch of 390 seedlings grown from seed collected in the Parque de la Quinta de la Fuente del Berro, Madrid, by Mrs Van Eeghen, a friend of elm researcher Johanna Westerdijk, in 1929 and named for the elm disease researcher Christine Buisman.

In later years, minor symptoms were detected on both the motherplant and grafted descendants, but these were considered too insignificant to delay its release to commerce as Ulmus 'Christine Buisman' in 1937.

However, such was the clamour for a resistant tree in the Netherlands, nurseries there raised and released large numbers, selling almost 10,000 per annum by the late 1930s.

Once its shortcomings, which included poor resistance to sea winds, became apparent, commercial production soon ceased,[11] although by this time it had already been exported to Italy and the United States [9] where it was planted as a street tree.

The tree can still be found in the Netherlands, notably in The Hague, Amsterdam, Wassenaar,[12] and Heiloo; in the UK it is largely restricted to Brighton.

[14] A particularly impressive plantation exists in the US at Buffalo, along McKinley, Chapin, Bidwell, and Lincoln Parkways,[15] as well as Richmond Avenue and in Forest Lawn Cemetery.