cross-posted from: https://derp.foo/post/318522

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Unlike other members of the genus Acer, it did not put on a blazing autumn display. Its big five-lobed leaves, with their irregular notching, merely turned a crumpled brown. No one minded. It was where and how it stood that drew crowds to the Steel Rigg car park and a good 20 minutes of perilous ascents and descents, to get a sighting. It was photographed in snow, mist and starlight, at sunrise and under the northern lights. It posed exquisitely. In 2016 it was voted England’s Tree of the Year, and the next year it came fifth in the European league, when the winner was a far less prepossessing Polish oak called Jozef.

The sycamore was also snapped on thousands of ordinary phones. It had star billing when the Potters came to celebrate a 60th birthday, with the birthday girl in a gold sash and the spaniels behaving for once; when the Courage family gathered for Christmas, all in their wellingtons, shouting in triumph; when Lee proposed to Hayley and Brendan proposed to Sinead, kneeling awkwardly among the rocks and roots, and when miscellaneous walkers and rain-refugees brought out their pork pies and Kit-Kats. Not a few went on to the Twice Brewed pub where the beer was called Sycamore Gap, with the tree’s portrait on the bottle. It was left alone then to the stars, and the quietly munching sheep.

Dramas happened to the sycamore, too. When “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves” was filmed there in 1991 a henchman of the local lord, in chain-mail and metal helmet, almost took an axe to it. It was saved by Kevin Costner shouting “This is my land, and my tree!” before pinning the henchman to the ground with his sword. A narrow shave. Mr Costner roughly proved his “ownership” by breaking off leaves as he passed, but the sycamore had the last word, effortlessly upstaging the star as he trudged up the hill away from it, an ant beside its glorious silhouette.

There were other excitements. In 2003 a helicopter filming a nature documentary crashed 100 feet away, threatening to explode; the tree was unperturbed. At another point, during filming for a television crime drama, it was surrounded by police cars. So locals imagined there might be another episode in the making when, on the morning of September 28th, they saw police round the sycamore again. But the tree was down. It lay awkwardly across the Wall, its severed stump shockingly white where it had been sliced with a 28-inch chainsaw.

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