A massive pine in Ballarat's Botanical Gardens has been nominated as a Tree of the Year in the National Trust of Australia's 2021 Victorian awards.
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The 40-metre yellow or Ponderosa pine, planted in the mid-19th Century and located near the 'Summer' statue, is now the tallest tree in the gardens. Its bark emits a butterscotch or vanilla scent, and the tree is significant for wildlife, both as shelter and for its seeds.
Native to North America, the tree was planted to see if it would survive in Ballarat's climate, which it seems to have done admirably. They can live for 300 to 600 years.
Eloise Dowd is the environmental heritage advocate at the National Trust. She says the awards are not only an important vehicle for giving the public a chance to recognise trees of significance, but to remind them the public can also nominate all trees for the National Trust Significant Tree Register.
"The National Trust created the Register in 1982, and since then, we've registered over 1400 trees in Victoria," Ms Dowd said.
"Inclusion in the register does not offer statutory protection to trees. But once it is registered, it's a powerful advocacy tool for the National Trust and community groups to work with their local governments and state governments to get protections put into the planning scheme for these trees.
"We really encourage community members to put in nominations, because even if it doesn't reach the threshold for the state register, we can speak to a council and say, 'We've gotten a nomination, this is where this tree is, and we think it's significant on a local level, even though it doesn't necessarily meet the threshold for a state register.'
"And so it's a useful advocacy tool in that way, we can then alert councils to the presence of these trees that they might not be aware of, which are on public property."
Voting for Tree of the year will commence Sunday April 18. All the trees can be seen at the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) website https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/treeoftheyear/.