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300-year-old Polish beech voted Tree of the Year
- randerson 2y ago"... for it's fourth consecutive time". Given the rate at which trees grow, perhaps they should change this to tree of the decade?
- NullHypothesist 2y agolol. This is a really lovely contest, but with the near-glacial pace of tree growth, I'd hope they'd mix up the criteria just enough every year to keep it interesting to us fast-moving humans.
- crazygringo 2y agoSeriously, "tree of the year" is conceptually nonsensical. Unless, once a tree wins, it's disqualified for the next half-century? But then you're basically making a ranked list of the top 50 trees and then approximately repeating it. I dunno. Maybe restrict it to one of thirty or forty subcategories of trees each year?
- hoseja 2y agoAre you sure you're getting that right? I think the sentence means Poland has won four times in a row, not this specific tree. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Tree_of_the_Year#Winners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Tree_of_the_Year#Winn...
- calrain 2y agoThat Scottish tree is amazing
- Aromasin 2y agoI've visited it in person, and it's utterly bizarre. You emerge from a monoculture pine forest (you can see the straight trees in the background of the photo) into a glade with the most amazing mix of ferns and moss that aren't found anywhere else in the forest. It made me really emotional to be honest. Scotland is beautiful in its own way, but to be frank it's mostly farmed woodland or shep pasture now. The true wilderness is few and far between, so seeing something that old with so much life bubbling around it, so then merge into a barren pine farm, made me deeply upset.
- jmclnx 2y agoToo bad the US did not have this contest, but that would mean it would have to care for the environment. Maybe Canada and Mexico can get together to have NA Contest. All the pics were beautiful.
- wbl 2y agoThe problem is California would win it. Not our fault the most beautiful trees in the world call this home.
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoCalifornia has extremely tall softwood trees. But that's not the the sum of beauty in trees. I'm partial to the eastern half of the continent. Very high diversity of amazing hardwoods. I've never been to Texas, but the pictures I've seen of Post Oaks look amazing. Tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera) are stunning, across the whole region. An oak beech maple forest turning red in the temperate autumn is awe inspiring. Man I like trees.
- hackingonempty 2y agoGo to Houston on a nice day and have a burger at Beck's Prime underneath a pair of 400 year old oaks. I haven't lived there in 30 years but its still one of my favorite things to do when I visit. This blog post has some good pics. https://www.penick.net/digging/?p=83517 https://www.penick.net/digging/?p=83517
- nukem222 2y agoRedwoods are impressive, but I'm not exactly sure a trunk passing out of the photo is the peak of tree aesthetics. I'd imagine the northeast or the northwest or parts of the south have the strongest claims.
- lithocarpus 2y agoCalifornia has many extraordinarily beautiful large trees besides redwoods. Madrone, bay laurel, and tanoak come to mind. Still, I find something exquisite in the eastern hardwoods, beech in particular. The turning of color and dropping all the leaves is really gorgeous.
- pneumic 2y agoThe genteel American Beech is currently threatened by disease. Where I live in New England is covered in beeches, and starting last year I have not seen a single one that doesn’t show symptoms of infection: https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/sustain/beech-leaf-disease-emerging-forest-threat-eastern-us https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/sustain...
- lithocarpus 2y agoIt's really sad. They are some of the most beautiful trees in my subjective opinion - I love the way their roots branch out a bit above the ground. I went to see the largest / one of the oldest beeches a couple years back and it had died presumably of this disease. I visited another old growth forest in Pennsylvania too and all the old growth beeches there were dead. In fact, in that forest, though it had never been logged the only large old growth trees I could find more than one or two of, were hemlocks. The chestnut, elm, ash, and now beech all having been taken by newly introduced diseases.
- octopoc 2y agoIt’s the hidden cost of global trade. Hopefully reducing foreign trade can forestall further extinctions.
- theoreticalmal 2y agoInteresting, do you mean you hope for more tariffs and trade restrictions? I’ve never considered ecology might be impacted by those kinds of tools
- lithocarpus 2y agoProbably true to some extent. Though I imagine even if trade were cut in half most of the tree diseases would still get around. The likelihood of a pathogen to get around is not linearly proportional to the volume of trade.
- 7952 2y ago
- uwagar 2y agohope some vandals now dont chop it!
- rvba 2y agoSadly when a tree becomes famous there are always some assholes who will destroy it. Just like that sycamore gap tree: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree
- uwagar 2y agothis is what prompted me to post.
- s0rce 2y agoOr drive drunk and crash into it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_T%C3%A9n%C3%A9r%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_T%C3%A9n%C3%A9r%C3%A9 in the middle of immense empty desert.
- yakshaving_jgt 2y agoThere was apparently quite a big social media campaign for voting for these trees, with some notable grumpiness from Spain that Poland keeps winning.
- surfingdino 2y agoSpain has a lot more winning beaches so it cancels out.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago„survivors” „witnesses of history” „testament to tradition” I do wonder if the trees share in a mutual understanding of all these human metaphors and language.
- panxyh 2y agoThey don't. But some humans do.
- rwmj 2y agoObviously not, but also trees don't hold tree of the year competitions for themselves. This is a human competition for humans. I was quite moved when I saw and touched the trees that had survived the Hiroshima bombing. (More so actually than the buildings or other memorials.) They're a real, living connection to history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakujumoku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakujumoku
- scyzoryk_xyz 2y agoI was poking a bit of fun at this language but I wouldn’t discredit the deeper emotions that trees evoke in humans. There is something whimsical about having such competitions.
- vkou 2y agoGiven that both the winner and the runner-ups are all in Europe. I suppose that other continents just don't have any trees of note.
- omega3 2y agoI suppose trees outside of Europe aren't taken into consideration for the European Tree of the Year award.
- rsynnott 2y agoAnd possibly Australia, based on the precedent set by Eurovision. EDIT: > Taking second place is the majestic Portuguese Moreton Bay Fig. > This tree was planted in the 19th Century in Coimbra's romantic Quinta das Lágrimas Gardens from seeds exchanged with Sydney's Botanical Garden and is a treasured landmark. AHA!
- martin293 2y agoMe when all the candidates for European Tree of the Year are from Europe
- timeon 2y agoCan you elaborate?
- hsshhshshjk 2y agohttps://www.treeoftheyear.org/vote https://www.treeoftheyear.org/vote Here's where the BBC got their information from. Let's give them the traffic :)
- fabrixxm 2y agoNo. 1 The Beech.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- emacdona 2y agoLoved the article. Texted it to my family group chat. My wife told me she had to close it immediately because the ads were so bad. I checked it in a browser without an ad blocker. TWO overlay (one after the other) that covered the entire content of the page. Then ads, ads, and more ads in the content. I get that the BBC needs to make money to produce content. But what good does it do for an advertiser to have ads be so annoying that people without ad blockers are just closing the page? What good does it to for an advertiser to be one of ten different brands being advertised on the same page?
- b112 2y agoI wonder if the "ads person" doesn't dogfood, and just goes by numbers. Everyone is using adblockers, and now people are just closing the page, but at each reduction in revenue and click through stats more ads are added. Eventually it's ads all the way down, and bots are all that's clicking, but as there are 1737733 ads on the page, one bot makes up for endless visitors, click through stats look good on a graph, done.
- MortyWaves 2y agoWhat ads?
- Rexogamer 2y agoassuming you're also in the UK? if so, internationally, bbc.co.uk (which, like their other domestic services, is ad-free) redirects to bbc.com (in the UK, it's the other way round). the international version (like, say, the global feed of the BBC News channel) has ads
- r0fl 2y agoI’m surprised Google doesn’t penalize pages such spammy ad pages. These ads are worse than most spammy thin content ai blogs
- sexy_seedbox 2y agoI'm not surprised Google doesn't penalize pages with such spammy Google Ad-filled pages.
- rsynnott 2y ago> The Heart of the Dalkowskie Hills, a breathtaking 300-year-old beech, has won Poland the European Tree of the Year award for the fourth consecutive time. Hardly seems fair; what chance do any of the other trees have? Like, if it’s Best Tree now, it will probably continue to be. EDIT: Oh, apparently it was _different_ Polish trees! Last year was a different Polish tree, also a beech. So that seems fair enough.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- s0rce 2y agoWe should start The America's tree of the year. I nominate a bristlecone pine and a monkey puzzle tree.
- karaterobot 2y agoI bet a lot of money on that Latvian oak tree, looks like I'm going to have to tighten up the old belt for a few months. I thought it was a sure thing!
- CyberDildonics 2y agoShouldn't it be tree of the year every year? What tree is catching up to it and overtaking it?