The vandal of Sycamore Gap has robbed us of a much-loved landmark, a thing of beauty, a carbon store and a supplier of oxygen, but they have not killed the tree (‘More than just a tree’: recollections of Northumberland’s Sycamore Gap, 29 September).
Below ground is a powerful root system, bent on staying alive. Dormant for the winter, it will wake up in spring and wonder where its headgear has gone. And there will be a fuzz of new shoots, setting out to replace the loss.
Depending on how it is managed, it could produce a multi-stemmed crown of significant size in a few decades, or a single stem could be selected to replace like for like. Either way, there’s no need to grub up the roots and wait for a struggling sapling to establish.
The beautiful white timber of the fallen giant can be made into some wonderful piece of art for us all to admire while the tree rebuilds itself. Very soon, in tree-life terms (though sadly not in ours), it will be back to give future generations as much joy as before, but with a new piece of history behind it.
Marian Whittaker
Fairford, Gloucestershire
• Aside from the understandable emotion and anger, there appears to be a general lack of knowledge about trees and the natural world. So we well-meaningly blunder in, trying to do good while actually doing harm, eg by planting a sapling (when the sycamore will probably already be putting out new growth); by buying it from a garden centre (with soil that may be harbouring diseases); and in not understanding that the trunk, its root system and the surrounding soil are far better left alone.
Sam Gibson
Ravensthorpe, Northamptonshire
• The news of the Sycamore Gap tree seems to have caused an outcry, but why there wasn’t the same concern when councils took to felling trees on our streets and roads some time back – Sheffield, can you hear me? The trees there were, to me anyway, just as beautiful as the “poetic” gap tree.
John F White
Hucknall, Nottinghamshire
• The fate of the sycamore on Hadrian’s Wall brings to mind the similar fate of the Tree of Ténéré, the lone survivor of a more temperate era in the Niger desert, with no other trees or indeed vegetation of any kind for miles in any direction, also felled by human agency, albeit unintentional in the form of a drunk driver, in 1973.
David Jackson
Kelsall, Cheshire
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