"Steve" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:48:04 +0100, Steve wrote:

I don't know if you guys have done (or know about) this yet, but the
National History Museum is holding a UK cherry tree survey:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/b...vey/index.html

It'd be great if we could all enter the trees we know about.

Steve

Well thanks for the replies, you ignorant *******s. You know, maybe it
is best that USENET is in its death throes and absolutely no wonder
why.


Having only just logged on and not seen your original post (some of us do
other things over the weekend), I thought I'd have a look at the NHM page to
see what you are all het up about.

Can't say I'm impressed. for those who haven't seen the page, "the aim of
the survey is to locate, identify and count trees in streets, parks and
gardens across the UK. We are asking the general public to take part for two
important reasons:

- a project of this size needs many people to contribute for the data to be
useful
- only you can give us information about the trees in your gardens and
neighbourhoods"

Having then had a look at the "What we know and what we want to find out"
section, my reaction is "So what?". Seems to me that someone has got a
grant to do a study which is pretty pointless (although the words
"biodiversity" and "climate" appear, so it must be important...).

If you looked at urban street trees 50 or so years ago you'd probably be
looking at London plane, as little else would put up with the pollution from
all those coal fires. Now many other types of tree - including cherry -
grow happily. So what? Does it matter what cherry trees grow in urban
areas? Why cherry? Might be more interesting to find out what palms are
growing and surviving.

If you are really interested in urban cherries, visit Japan.

--

Jeff