there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral
STUMPY MY BELOVED!!!!
For added context on what rehabilitating the area means: there are structural issues with the Tidal Basin seawall that cause flooding like this independent of rainfall. Big portions of the sidewalk in Stumpy’s section are regularly submerged, which is bad for the land and the trees themselves, not to mention an accessibility issue for visitors.
It’s sad that Stumpy and many other trees in the area will need to be cut down, but it will ensure the continued survival of the other trees in the area, and Stumpy himself will live on in his cuttings!
I believe Stumpy will be taken to the national arboretum and his clones will return to the tidal basin after the rebuilding.
Someone left him a bottle of bourbon as an offering.
The Japanese Embassy came to pay him honor this week.
Stumpy and his cohort are part of the original gift from Japan more than 100 years ago, and many have lived this long bc the National Parks takes care of them. Normally the trees live about 40-50 years.
