Sometimes it is nice to be proven wrong. This is one of those times. It was only last month that I wrote an article bemoaning the fact that nobody was going to mourn for the loss of a single apple tree (article here) How wrong I was. I was convinced then that nobody had even noticed the apple tree or its loss once it had been chopped down. In fact not only had its imminent demise been noted but somebody had actively attempted to do something about it. Italo Cecchini whose house is right next to the land now in the process of being turned into a carpark, seriously thought about digging up the tree and moving it on to his property. When the sheer size of that operation made it unfeasible he did the next best thing and took a number of young buds from the tree, preserved them in a damp cool environment, under sand, until the time was right for grafting them on to younger apple trees on his property.
As it turns out he was not the only person who attempted this process. Italo knows of another local person who was moved by the threatened demise of the tree into attempting the same procedure. Although this time he used a slightly different process – he kept the young buds inside potatoes to keep them damp, cool and alive.
As Mark Twain once remarked in the press in the United States after his obituary had been mistakenly published.”The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”
It is still too early to say if any of these graftings have been successful but maybe, just maybe there is still good chance that the old apple tree will live on.
Fingers crossed.