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The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

economist.com

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Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#121

Post by cafard »

oooyay wrote: post #30
andrewstuart wrote: post #29

There was a local project here on the railway lines. As part of the project they had to cut down a long row of giant pine trees in the park next to the train line. So when the railway project was complete I took my 8 year old son to the native nursery about bought ten mountain ash seedlings. Together we planted them in a long line in the park. Here's pictures of how big mountain ash gets: https://wilderlands.earth/st…

In Portland they recently started cutting trees down to widen the road for extended bus and bike lanes. That spawned a conversation that we've lost a third of our tree cover due to various things and the city hasn't kept up. That week I started burying cones from my Douglas Firs, which aren't nearly as big as the Mountain Ashes you planted, but are fairly large. With any luck I'll have five in my yard.

In Washington, DC, there is an organization named Casey Trees, which is dedicated to restoring the tree cover. There are community plantings now and then, and it will kick in $50 toward the cost of any sapling (I assume conditional on type) that you plant.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#122

Post by Dylanfm »

I wonder if they knew they were coppicing the tree, rather than killing it. Thankfully the tree will continue to grow, I think the land managers have chosen to leave the tree there. Many of the oldest trees around (at least in the UK) have signs of coppicing and pollarding. Those who cut the tree have unintentionally extended its life (e.g https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-203131...). The only issue is it wasn't done at the best time of year.

You can read more about coppicing on the national coppice federation: https://ncfed.org.uk/public/coppicing/

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#123

Post by zeristor »

Tree of Ténéré

"The Ténéré Tree (French: L'Arbre du Ténéré) was a solitary acacia (Vachellia tortilis) that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth, the only one for over 150 kilometres. It was a landmark on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger, so well known that it and the Arbre Perdu (Lost Tree) to the north are the only trees to be shown on a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000. The Tree of Ténéré was located near a 40-metre deep well. It was knocked down in 1973 by a truck driver."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Ténéré

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#124

Post by mcmoor »

felipeerias wrote: post #102

"Opposition to felling ancient trees is a peculiar cause because it seems to unite progressives and conservatives. There is something about taking the life of a being far older than the span of any human life, which has taken many centuries to reach such a size and whose roots and branches support entire ecosystems in miniature, that seems morally repugnant to many. [...] "It may well make no logical sense, as many h…

I'm reminded of meme about cross political quadrant synergy that when auth-right and lib-left both wants to conserve nature (because of "conserve" and "nature" respectively), auth-left and lib-right couldn't care less about it (because progress > established things).

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#127

Post by will5421 »

rpickering wrote: post #126
will5421 wrote: post #103

I don’t get why they don’t just put the tree back on its stump to see if it’ll grow back

Eh?

Take the fallen tree, lift it up and place it back where it was, on the stump in the ground. Hold it there to see if the tree will repair the cut

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#128

Post by dukeyukey »

defrost wrote: post #100
bluescrn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waging war on cars is waging war on the economy. The economy is our life support system. Aggressively pushing bikes as the only future of transport is kind of ableist. Fine for healthy young people, in flat areas, on dry days. But not for the elderly, disabled, or unfit. And public transport options need to be safe and comfortable. That doesn't fit with currently-trendy soft on crime policies.

That's what was said about the horse and buggy. Evolution's an actual thing, you know, both for living forms and for technology. The circulation of resources, goods, and energy is our life support - the economic assumption that growth is unlimited and GDP is a good metric is just a fad of the last century or two.

To be fair the last century has seen near-inmmeasurable improvements in the human condition.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#129

Post by stevage »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #79
pstuart wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other Portland tree fail was where the city did plant trees they didn't bother to care for them: https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/09/trees-planted-by-the-c... It would be nice to see more government collaboration where citizens can assist in ways that will actually stick.

It's not a "tree fail" to remove some trees if it means a substantial conversion of passenger car to bus and bike use which reduces CO2 consumption. If the bike lane causes one person to give up their car and commute by bike, that's worth hundreds of trees per year . The same is true for solar. There are a lot of cases where cutting down a few trees for a solar array means a substantial increase in CO2 offset, more t…

Trees have many benefits besides CO2 sequestration.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#130

Post by ionwake »

Nursie wrote: post #66
extraduder_ire wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sits in the center of England where its diameter is at its narrowest Seems like a good place to put a wall to split the land in two then. I wasn't aware until just now that the modern border of scotland is a good bit north of where Hadrian's wall is.

But South of the Antonine Wall. Hadrian's gets all the recognition, and that's probably mostly because it is still recognisable, but the Romans built a second wall 20 years later, just to the north of where Glasgow and Edinburgh are now - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall It was built mostly of turf and wood, so time has erased it much more completely, and apparently they retreated back to Hadrian's wall af…

Very interesting thank you
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