Officials carry out works to save 1,100-year-old tree

SAMSUN

Within the scope of a project to save Turkey’s monumental trees, municipality officials in the northern province of Samsun carried out extensive works on April 15 to treat a 1,100-year-old plane tree against fungal degradation.

On detecting rotten tissue and fungus building on the millenarian plane tree, which is 18 meters wide and 35 meters tall, officials used nontoxic chemicals to treat the tree to save it from decaying any further.

It took a day of laborious work to properly treat the tissues and bark of the tree against fungus, and it is hoped that now it will be able to live for many more years to come, officials said.

Hamdi Akbaş, the land’s owner where the millenarian plane tree stands, thanked the municipality for their arduous work to save the tree.

“The tree is under a recovery process, and we are using the latest techniques to strengthen the tree in hopes for it to live longer,” Samsun Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Mustafa Demir told Demirören News Agency.

Noting that the municipality has been working on a project to promote the millenarian plane tree and make it a tourism hotspot, the mayor said: “The tree is old but in very good condition. We want to use this area where the tree stands as a tourism destination.”