Kids in West Belfast have been busy planting 250 saplings after a huge beech that stood sentry at the entrance to Belfast City Cemetery from about 1869 was cut down.
Belfast City Council say the mature tree was infected with white rot, which impacts the roots and core of trees making them a collapse risk.
Because of its weakened state a further fungal infection also attacked the tree, whose whispering branches and leafy arms waved farewell to the many generations who passed beneath on life’s last journey.
Councillor Steven Corr says losing the tree was a real shame but that something positive has sprouted from its time in the graveyard.
He told Belfast Live: “We took down the oldest tree in West Belfast last week, it took them three days to cut it down and there’s just a big stump there now.
“The city cemetery is Belfast’s Glasnevin. It’s where everyone has a loved one buried. That tree would have witnessed people in WW1, it would have seen victims of the conflict, sailors and soldiers from WW2, it would have seen victims of the Spanish Flu and victims of poverty - and still does.
“It’s such a poignant thing. the amount of people who have walked beneath it, the amount of people who have cried, wept, mourned as they were going in to bury loved ones and now it has succumbed to a fungal disease brought on by global warming.
“It was one of the first trees planted in the cemetery,” the Sinn Fein councillor added.
“I didn’t realise quite a lot of our broad leaf trees in Ireland are going to decimated over the coming years because of global warming. You can see cherry blossoms out in Belfast already because they think it’s spring and the hard winter hasn’t come.
“Eight nine years ago I was out shovelling snow today and it was freezing.”
In a turn of events since the tree was lost, Steven said: “Just a couple of yard away in Falls Park we put 250 saplings in on Saturday to offshoot that. The girls from St Galls under 13 football team came in and planted them.
“It’s a bad news story that a 150-year-old tree has succumbed to a fungus but within a week we had 250 new ones planted.”
A Belfast City Council spokesperson said: “We had been monitoring the health and condition of the large mature copper beech tree close to the entrance of the City Cemetery for some time as it was infected with a white rot that affects the heartwood and major roots of the host tree. During a recent inspection an additional disease was identified which attacks weakened or stressed trees.
“This can also decay roots and stems, potentially resulting in root or stem failure. After considering all options, due to the public safety risk, the tree was felled earlier this week. We will be planting new trees in its place and some of the existing mature copper beech has been preserved to form part of the biodiverse roof on the new visitor centre in City Cemetery.”
