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.

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'.

[10][11][12][13][14] 'Pinnato-ramosa' grows very vigorously, and can ultimately make a large tree,[15] however it also has a straggling, untidy habit, producing long shoots 0.60–0.95 m in length.

[5] An Ulmus turkestanica (listed separately from 'Umbraculifera'), "a compact grower with smallish leaves", appeared in early 20th-century catalogues of the Gembrook or Nobelius Nursery near Melbourne, Australia.

By the 1930s, when 'Pinnato-ramosa' was being recommended as resistant to early-strain DED,[19] the "Turkestan elm" in nursery lists, as descriptions show, was usually this cultivar, not U. turkestanica Regel.

[27] In the UK, one of three trees labelled Ulmus pinnato-ramosa obtained from Späth in 1902 by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh survives (2020),[28] measuring 15 m height × 82 cm d.b.h.

[30] Across the Atlantic, a probable 'Pinnato-ramosa' grows in the grounds of the Gillett-Beer Farm, Chicago Road, Warren, a suburb within the Detroit Metropolitan Area; the tree was 45 m tall, with a d.b.h.