A couple of decades ago I was taking a class at UNC on survey sampling methods. Topics included designing sampling schemes that were efficient in the statistical and actual cost sense, developing variance estimators based on your sampling scheme, etc.

For example if you want to observe and measure some attribute of classes at public schools in your county, it might be infeasible to send data collectors to all of 15 schools, but the marginal cost of measuring additional classrooms at the same school once you're there is minimal. So, how many schools should you visit and how many class rooms per school given a budget and assumptions on inter and intra school variation?

We had had a group assignment to estimate the average circumference of trees on campus. Our initial plan something like 1) get a map of campus and split it into zones 2) sample zones randomly 3) everyone goes to a few (small) zones and tries to roughly map out the trees there 4) sample again from those trees and physically measure them. This would mean running around campus for at least a few days if we wanted to an honest job. And it was a rainy spring in North Carolina.

However, one of my group mates had a stroke of brilliance and decided to email the grounds department. To our surprise they were able to provide us with a full list of every known tree on campus as well as GIS data with locations. So we were able to do a legitimate simple random sample which was optimally efficient from in terms of both variance and time-in-rain.

In conclusion I'm pro list-of-individual-trees.

Delighted to see my local one in there, with a description reading like it was written by Douglas Adams.

“The Hungry Tree is an otherwise unremarkable specimen of the London plane, which has become known for having partially consumed a nearby park bench.”

Growing up I would see authors listing particular species of trees when describing a scene, and I’d marvel at the idea of someone getting all the references. It seemed so old-timey. But during the pandemic, my wife and I got into plants because it was an outdoor activity. I used an app to identify all the trees in our neighborhood (then we found out our town has a map online of them all). I have my favorite ones I like to go by on walks. In a given area there are really only 10 or 15 species you have to know to cover most of the trees you see. Being aware of these things adds depth to the world as you experience it.

Several more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Individual_physical_o...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_individual_a...

So sad that the Sycamore Gap Tree is listed as "historical" because of those two idiots. I'm glad they're in jail.

Also, why isn't the Whomping Willow in there somewhere? They should create a new sub-category for "Fictional" trees.

Humans, man.

The Tree of Ténéré was a solitary acacia that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth. 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 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 is estimated to have existed for approximately 300 years until it was knocked down in 1973 by a drunk truck driver.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_T%C3%A9n%C3%A9r%C3%A9

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superlative_trees

> A tree located in an established gay cruising area, noted for its slender trunk which facilitates gay sex.

The mind boggles haha

I can't believe this got past the Wikipedia editors.

    "This tree, I tell you, has a slutty little back arch".

I noticed the "bicycle tree" in Scotland which has encapsulated a bicycle amongst other things as it has grown. It reminded me of a very old graveyard I would play in as a kid. The oldest side was all old trees and one day I noticed one of the trees had a couple of gravestones up in its boughs. I always wondered if these were really lifted up there by the tree and if so whether that's unusual.

This moves me. It affirms that grown trees have tremendous personality.

One of Wikipedia’s greatest contributions is collecting records like this that wouldn’t appear in a traditional encyclopedia.

Adyar banyan tree in Chennai is missing.

https://www.ts-adyar.org/banyan-tree

But does the article include a handy list of How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away?

My own favourite - the Last Ent of Affric:

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

However obscure this page might be, I was there just a few days ago. Clicked on it from this article about a tree that was cut down, and it was apparently a big thing in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree

The saddest part of this is that we really have no idea just how many or the oldest redwood trees that were felled in California and on the western cost of the USA that were possibly multiple thousands of years old, i.e., 4000 years, possibly even 6000 years based on old images and accounts of trees, and that's just what we do have signals about.

Side note; there are several places in Europe where Sequoias were planted at various times and are basically infants at 150-200 years old, having been brought back to Europe by explorers and aristocrats.

One tree I'm surprised not to see here - the tree that Newton sat under that supposedly hit him on the head with an apple.

And in contrast to that, have a look at home many trees we are losing every year:

https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation

some of which could have made it to this list of special trees :-(

I'm sure everybody could name local examples of Trees of Mild Renown.

Mine is the Jollyman Oak, which stood in Jollyman Park on Stelling Road, Cupertino and was 160 years old before residential re-development crushed its root system.

I heard about its death via Facebook.

Glad to see the Major Oak on there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Oak

Lots of school trips to see a wonky tree were had as a child!

I clicked expecting some catalog of data structures but it was a pleasant surprise.

Includes Martin Fowler's strangler fig. Yes it is a design pattern and a tree.

It would be interesting to see the list of past trees. The most famous I can think of Donar's Oak (also called Thor's Oak), which was revered by Germanic pagans, and felled by Saint Boniface.

Of course: https://m.xkcd.com/2977/

Slightly off topic but does anyone know where to get a huge dataset of tree images? I'm talking millions.

And then there's the Senator Tree [0], estimated to be more than ten times older (~3500 years), which was "killed when a meth addict started a garbage fire inside the hollow trunk so she could see the crystal meth she was trying to smoke."

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senator_(tree)

What I find funny is how the drunk driver was able to hit the only obstacle in sight in the middle of an empty desert.

forget 300 year old trees... the Californians cut down sequoia trees that were probably up to 6000 years old. The oldest current one alive is estimated to be only 3200 years old.

On a scale of atrocities humans have committed, I can't really think of anything that is more atrocious than the felling of those sequoias that were at the very least as old as the oldest known human civilization. 6000+ years ... poof gone, turned into beams and furniture for houses. They've been around at least 100 Million years, but almost and possibly will not survive what is the equivalent of 0.173 seconds if you scale the 100M years to one day.

Among all the many atrocities humans have and currently are committing, things like destroying something that took 6000 years to grow seems particularly bad because there is no way to even really restore or save that, like you might be able to restore an at-risk population of animals or even revive an extinct species.

It takes about 150-200 years (we don't really know) for a sequoia to become mature, i.e., fruitful, and then it requires fire to reproduce. Let me repeat that, it absolutely requires fire to reproduce once it as matured following surviving around 175 years of human proximity, not sooner.

For our European community, it seems that the various redwoods and sequoia that were planted in Europe in the 19th century, could be coming into maturity now/soon. They are technically invasive, but at a 175 year maturity cycle, I suspect there's not much you have to worry about.