"Has anyone interviewed the trees yet?"

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 11, Issue 499, 17 August 1993, Page 4

"Has anyone interviewed the trees yet?"

• "Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough. In youth it sheltered me. And 1*11 protect it now" G P Morris 1802/64. This cherry tree disease is spreading with the speed of a head louse epidemic. Has anyone interviewed the trees yet? They would be riddled with years of front page news. When I last in-

spected them (how could one resist in the face of such furore); looked at their strange coppiced appearance and buried my finger into a particularly diseased core; I reflected that no amount of colagen could help the faded glory.

There seems to be a moral dilemma involved equal to anything euthanasia arguments can throw at us. If I drove past and saw someone chained to cr hugging one, I would not give it a second thoughL I too cherish the trees and plants my deceased relatives have nurtured. When I leave a wake with two sherries under the belt, I also have a bag in hand, it contains (no, not the family silver) material from those beloved plants; cuttings and seed/ I have both memories in the heart and in my g arden. This is a great comfort. Could not those horticulturalists that organised the petition also request that the council allow them to gather non-dis-eased material off those cherry trees and thus propagate them to provide a continum or commission the work. These ensuing trees, when of a suitable size, could be sited yet again amongst the others on Goldfinch Street with perhaps the use of a commemorative plaque. 'The first out is the deepest'. Justine Adams, BSc (Bot), 'Waitui' , Mangahouhou Rd,

Ohakune.