I work with plants on a daily basis at work. I read and write about plants at home, as well as spending time in the garden with them. I am a bit of a plant nerd, I have to say. This is mostly down to the fact that I find them so interesting. The particular point of interest that I want to mention today is something that I think trees are so interesting for, but the tree wouldn’t have a need to do so if the gardeners weren’t so lazy in the first place.

Take a look at the photo below.

This is a tree that I saw last week in Auburn Botanic Gardens in Sydney last week (I will wrote about that later this week). What is interesting is the fact that the tree is growing around a plant label that must be attached to a pole that is presumably hidden within the tree by now!

I think it is so interesting that a tree can grow around something like this sign. It shows their adaptability and how they just get on with living, no matter what we throw at it!

Seeing things like this really frustrates me for a couple reasons. The first one being laziness on the part of the gardeners/maintenance staff within the gardens at some point in time. It must have been clear as day that the tree was growing too close to this sign, but the sign wasn’t moved to allow the tree to grow without any hinderance. It wouldn’t be that hard to do, but it wasn’t done. Just laziness-something I don’t like seeing in someone’s work!

The other reason is a safety thing. The tree itself will likely be fine for a long time, and I hope that it is because it’s a rather attractive one, despite the random blue ‘feature’ sign. It’s more a case of when the tree is removed (because of safety or tree death reasons). To remove the tree, chainsaws would be used, with the potential that the user of the chainsaw unaware there is a bit of metal in the tree. This could be a little dodgy if the two come into contact, potentially leading to injury.

I have seen similar things with trees before, where they have grow around poles in the ground, irrigation pipes and other trees, but the tree in question is a new one. If the tree was in the middle of a quiet area, or an industrial zone, I can almost understand why the sign wouldn’t have been removed, but in a ‘botanic garden’, I don’t know why it wasn’t.

Trees, like all plants, are interesting things to work with, observe and enjoy. Just don’t have litter to any other detritus close enough to a tree for it grow around the said rubbish!