300-year-old Polish beech voted Tree of the Year | Hacker News Reader

300-year-old Polish beech voted Tree of the Year

bbc.co.uk

222 pointsn1b0m61 comments

Loved 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?

I 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.

What ads?

assuming 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

I’m surprised Google doesn’t penalize pages such spammy ad pages.

These ads are worse than most spammy thin content ai blogs

I'm not surprised Google doesn't penalize pages with such spammy Google Ad-filled pages.

The 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...

It'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.

It’s the hidden cost of global trade. Hopefully reducing foreign trade can forestall further extinctions.

Interesting, do you mean you hope for more tariffs and trade restrictions? I’ve never considered ecology might be impacted by those kinds of tools

Probably 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.

I wonder if this is an inescapable consequence of globalisation. It just plays out slowly.

I think, unfortunately, you are right, it's just that it's playing out slowly enough that it's hard for us to see. Over time, natural selection will work its magic and the trees within the species that are more resistant to the disease will reproduce and the genes for resistance will spread throughout the population. The unfortunate thing is that this is not something that happens in a human lifetime, or even many human lifetimes, and it's not going to save individual trees living right now.

Plants don't have an immune system, at least the way we normal think of one. As far as we know, there isn't a way to "vaccinate" them against diseases. Maybe that will change with molecular techniques, but not today.

Small insects, bacteria, seeds, can easily travel thousands of miles and across even the oceans with storms, birds, etc.

All native North American tree species are dying. Chestnut is gone, Ash will be gone in the next 10 years, Beech is next.

Echoing the sentiments and information here. In California, there's Sudden Oak Death which is killing several native oak species. However, the tree which is most impacted by SOD seems to be the Tanoak, which is not a true oak, but which is a beautiful tree and is crucial to several ecosystems. Several species of fungi are associated with Tanoak, for example. Very sad.

And the American Elm, a beautiful very American-looking tree. Almost completely wiped out

The elm trees are gone from Britain. I grew up without them.

I'm looking for land to buy. I won't see my trees reach maturity, but hopefully I can get them established.

https://www.treeoftheyear.org/vote

Here's where the BBC got their information from. Let's give them the traffic :)

Not my views. It does not work without JS, the BBC does.

I gave them my traffic and they wanted to verify I'm a human

"... for it's fourth consecutive time".

Given the rate at which trees grow, perhaps they should change this to tree of the decade?

lol. 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.

Seriously, "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?

this is a good take, i think we should just let it be the tree of the year every year that it earns it though.

We could find better looking trees every year. We don't currently have pictures of every single tree on earth to judge like that.

Are 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#Winn...

There was apparently quite a big social media campaign for voting for these trees, with some notable grumpiness from Spain that Poland keeps winning.

Spain has a lot more winning beaches so it cancels out.

Too 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.

The problem is California would win it. Not our fault the most beautiful trees in the world call this home.

California 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.

Go 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

Redwoods 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.

California 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.

Yep. And Juniper, too. And Sequoia, which I don't believe are technically redwoods if we want to split hairs. And a bunch of cool oaks.

It took me a longer time than I care to admit that it’s pronounced “tan-oak” and not “tan-o-ak”

California is also home to the oldest known tree, Methuselah, a bristlecone pine.

This is my vote, except I don't know which one it is.

If you judge them in person, I think redwood easily wins, and CA has two giant versions(coastal redwood and sequoia).

Also Douglass fir is nearly as large & long lived as redwood, tho less impressive in person.

An NA contest would be a nearer match to this - this is a European contest, not any one country or the EU.

Is the US had its own contest they would probably call it the "world tree contest".

> 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.

That Scottish tree is amazing

I'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.

I 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!

„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.

They don't. But some humans do.

Obviously 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

I 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.

We should start The America's tree of the year. I nominate a bristlecone pine and a monkey puzzle tree.

Shouldn't it be tree of the year every year? What tree is catching up to it and overtaking it?

hope some vandals now dont chop it!

Sadly 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

this is what prompted me to post.

Or drive drunk and crash into it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_T%C3%A9n%C3%A9r%C3%A9 in the middle of immense empty desert.

Given 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.

I suppose trees outside of Europe aren't taken into consideration for the European Tree of the Year award.

And 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!

Me when all the candidates for European Tree of the Year are from Europe

Can you elaborate?

No. 1 The Beech.

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