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Re: TT: Significance of individual trees
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For those of you on the FWG-L, this message is in response to a request on
TreeTown listserv for any info on famous individual trees worldwide...
Bob
Offhand, I can think of 4 very significant trees:
1. A huge golden Douglas fir in Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte
Islands, BC). Don't know if it had a name, but it glowed in the sunlight,
was hundreds of years old, and played an integral cultural role for the
local Haida. Last year a disgruntled unemployed logger chopped it down.
UBC gathered samples, and I believe is now propagating hundreds of little
golden Douglas firs.
2. There's a tree inside the Golden Temple, the holiest place of the Sikh
religion, in Punjab India. The story goes that, thousands of years ago,
a beautiful but humble princess was punished by her father and forced to
marry a cripple.... I forget the rest of the story, I apologize, but I
believe the man turned into a hawk and the woman turned into a tree, which
the Golden Temple is now built around.
3. A 10 year old white pine in Temagami--seven years ago I tied a knot in
one of its branches, as the Teme-Augama Anishnabai used to do to
commemorate a person. I did it to commemorate my relationship with that
place. I pass by it every year and look forward to seeing it in 50 years.
4. Buddha gained enlightenment after years of meditation under a banyan
tree in northern India. Don't know if that tree is still around, but that
has made banyan trees very significant in all Buddhist countries.
I find it interesting that these trees all have high spiritual/religious
significance. I believe all the significant individual trees in America
mentioned by Dave were significant solely because of their great size...
Bob Olajos
rolajos@uoguelph.ca
www.uoguelph.ca/~rolajos
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