List: 'Meet 10 of the World’s Most Famous Trees'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Wikipedia says the Anne Frank tree was a 150-170-year-old horse-chestnut tree in Amsterdam’s city centre; and it’s mentioned three times in Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl [1]. For the past several years it’d been infested with moths and a fungus. In November 2007 the municipal authority condemned it as unsafe and declared it should be cut down. But the next day an injunction was issued to stop its removal. Despite subsequent remedial activity, 11 days ago – on 23 August – it was blown down by high winds that broke it off a metre above ground level [2, 3]. Though dead, its legacy lives on via several saplings that are thriving in various corners of the world – just as Anne Frank’s legacy lives on via her Diary, museum and garden. Also via the Anne Frank virtual tree [4]. Today’s list, appropriately enough, is from treehugger.com. It’s title’s self explanatory: ‘Meet 10 of the World’s Most Famous Trees’[5]. Posted on treehugger on 17 August, the slideshow it includes the Anne Frank tree which it says ‘still stands’. Me? I’ve seen only two of the 10: Pebble Beach’s Lone Cypress, and a Drive-Thru Californian Redwood. But I think every single tree in the world is famous – by using up CO2 and so doing its best to mitigate global warming and climate change.