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by madaxe_again 406 days ago
Nobody killed the sycamore tree - they coppiced it, and it’s regrowing with vigour.
3 comments

It is absolutely not “regrowing with vigour”. When I visited six weeks ago, there was one very small sprout a few inches in size.

For comparison, we had to fell a mature sycamore on our land last year; this now has more than a dozen shoots growing from its base, ranging between six and ten feet tall, all with lots of leaves on them.

All of the stories celebrating the regrowth are from August 2024. They describe 12 “sprouts” - with a hope that they might grow into something more. As of March 2025 - they hadn’t.

You claimed the tree was “regrowing with vigour” - this is simply false at this point in time.

Are you sure? The video I just saw on the BBC shows the tree being felled at its base! That's not pruning.
No, that’s coppicing. I didn’t say it was pruned. Coppicing does not kill the tree - it actually does the opposite, and extends the lifespan.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing

And sycamore trees are an invasive non-native species. In ancient forest, teams of people are employed to remove them
This particular tree was at least 1000 years old - there's documentary evidence of Robin Hood using it for shade.
It was 150 years old, it makes no difference to me personally in terms of feelings, but 1000 was far enough out that I wanted to correct it. The documentary evidence was a Kevin Costner movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree

I suspect that the user you're replying to was joking
It was planted in the 1800s