Do you remember the Broccoli Tree? Photographer Patrik Svedberg photographed a Swedish tree that resembled a broccoli floret over a number of years, posted the results to Instagram, and made the tree internet famous. Then some asshole vandal sawed through the branches of the tree and it had to be chopped down. John Green eulogized the Broccoli Tree in a video:
To share something is to risk losing it, especially in a world where sharing occurs at tremendous scale and where everyone seems to want to be noticed, even if only for cutting down a beloved tree.
Well, the stump of the tree was left in the hopes that it would grow again and I’m pleased to say that it has — here’s a photo from three years ago:
You can even see it on Google Maps. I’m glad the tree is growing again but wish the destruction hadn’t happened in the first place.
For the past few years, Patrik Svedberg has been taking photos of a beautiful Swedish tree he dubbed The Broccoli Tree. In a short time, the tree gained a healthy following on Instagram, becoming both a tourist attraction and an online celebrity of sorts. (I posted about tree two years ago.) Yesterday, Svedberg posted a sad update: someone had vandalized the tree by sawing through one of the limbs.
One of the trees branches has now (a couple of days ago..?) been sawn in almost all the way through and it’s just a matter of time before it’ll fall off. I won’t be around to document it, others will for sure so I guess you lunatics who did it can enjoy every moment.
Very soon after, it was decided by some authority that the vandalism meant the entire tree had to come down. A work crew arrived and now it’s gone:
Oscar Wilde once wrote that “Each man kills the thing he loves”. I don’t know exactly what Wilde meant by that, but our collective attention and obsession, amplified by the speed and intensity of the internet & social media, tends to ruin the things we love: authors, musicians, restaurants, actors, beloved movies, vacation spots, artists, democracies, and even a tree that became too famous to live.
Update: Via the Broccoli Tree’s Instagram Story comes a pair of updates related to the cutting down of the tree that I wanted to record here for posterity.
1. Along with many other people, I wondered why the whole tree had to come down because of a single cut in one of the branches. The answer is “because they found cuts in most limbs/branches some day after so someone had gone back to ‘finish the job’”. :(
2. The tree was cut in that way and the stump left so that new sprouts might form. Life finds a way! Here’s hoping for the eventual appearance of Broccoli Tree 2.0!
For the past two years, Patrik Svedberg has been photographing a single Swedish tree and posting the results to Instagram.
The tree is the protagonist, but rather a passive one, letting the plot unfold around it. Each photo contains a story of its own. It’s all in the details and very often with a humorous twist. Just “beautiful” would bore me to death.
(via @jaycer17)
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