One of Wikipedia’s greatest contributions is collecting records like this that wouldn’t appear in a traditional encyclopedia.

But does the article include a handy list of How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away?

However obscure this page might be, I was there just a few days ago. Clicked on it from this article about a tree that was cut down, and it was apparently a big thing in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree

I clicked expecting some catalog of data structures but it was a pleasant surprise.

I asked ChatGPT to infer some facts from this list and it hallucinated an entire tree.

Slightly off topic but does anyone know where to get a huge dataset of tree images? I'm talking millions.

The saddest part of this is that we really have no idea just how many or the oldest redwood trees that were felled in California and on the western cost of the USA that were possibly multiple thousands of years old, i.e., 4000 years, possibly even 6000 years based on old images and accounts of trees, and that's just what we do have signals about.

Side note; there are several places in Europe where Sequoias were planted at various times and are basically infants at 150-200 years old, having been brought back to Europe by explorers and aristocrats.

Of course: https://m.xkcd.com/2977/

Adyar banyan tree in Chennai is missing.

https://www.ts-adyar.org/banyan-tree

I noticed the "bicycle tree" in Scotland which has encapsulated a bicycle amongst other things as it has grown. It reminded me of a very old graveyard I would play in as a kid. The oldest side was all old trees and one day I noticed one of the trees had a couple of gravestones up in its boughs. I always wondered if these were really lifted up there by the tree and if so whether that's unusual.