I've been musing about recording the locations of our best old cherry trees, maybe even asking for an enhancement to our festival map to allow for queries for heritage trees. We could have a thread in the Cultivar IDs forum to collect proposals, and organize a list in some way if we can't add them to the map. I'm not sure what we should collect. 1- Do they have to be of a particular age? I don't think any of us can estimate tree ages. We could knock on doors and find the person who remembers the farthest back seeing the trees there? 2 - Do they have to be healthy? The 'Akebono' at the Rose Garden in Stanley Park all have witch's broom (that spelling is Wikipedia, or witches' broom, according to Britannica Online Encyclopedia). Would we want to identify those as trees that are so much a part of our heritage that they should not be removed? What about those 'Takasago' and 'Okame', relatively rare trees, almost all with brown rot? What about great old trees with hefty mazzard trunks and mismatched limbs of the cultivar? 3 - Do there have to be a lot of them in one place? If the tree is just a small tree, but the only one of its cultivar that's known in the city, would we want it on the list? I didn't ask my friend what these jars were about. I just knew they spoke to me. So many applications.
