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Parks department removes living Anne Frank memorial after realizing it was dead - or maybe it's just resting

Where the Anne Frank sapling used to be
Anne Frank plaque

UPDATE: Rachel Paiste reports:

Anne Frank tree isn't dead. It's being revived at a greenhouse in Franklin Park (as per parks and rec dept.)

A couple of bare spots in the grass today are all that remains of what was supposed to turn into a leafy memorial to Anne Frank on Boston Common.

As first noted last month, the Anne Frank sapling - which came from the actual chestnut tree outside the attic where she lived - failed to make it through its first Boston winter.

Parks workers removed the remains of the sapling, the decorative ironwork that protected it and a plaque explaining the planting.

Boston was one of eleven US sites selected for saplings propagated from the tree before it finally died in 2010, and city and Dutch officials planted the sapling last summer, in a ceremony with Aliya Finkel, a student at Gann Academy in Waltham who convinced the city to apply for one of the saplings.

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Comments

WORLD CLASS: embarrassment

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What was asked of the parks dept was not easy. I don't think i've even seen a Aesculus hippocastanum in the boston area. And I live near the arboretum. Anybody?

Let me guess, you spent all winter in Florida?

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I've seen a couple out in Western Mass, on the campus if my alma mater, and I've also seen some up on the north shore, so the can definitely survive here, but all the ones I've ever seen have been full grown. I'm sure a sapling was seriously out of place and had a terrible time in our crazy polar vortex winter.

People who don't know what they're talking about will just always be naysayers if they feel like being naysayers.

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die this past winter because I planted them in the fall.

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n/t

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There are at least a half dozen big ones in the Public Garden for example.

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The Anne Frank tree was a Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) as are some of the trees in Boston Common. Take a look at page 36 of this guide
http://www.growbostongreener.org/gbg/pdfs/BostonTreeGuide.pdf
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_chestnut

It is not the same as American chestnut (Castanea dentata) which was widely killed by blight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_chestnut

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The focus urban parks should be maintaining and adding new trees instead of adding food vendors like Earl of Sandwich and increasing the number of paved areas. I've seen more trees chopped in recent years than I can recall. It's depressing. And yes, I do donate money to the Friends of the Boston Public Garden which also helps take care of the Boston Common.

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I guess you haven't been down there recently, else you would have seen two new grassy areas placed right by the fountain. I can't think of a case recently where more paved areas were added - can you be more specific?

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it's the perfect spot for a food truck and tourist kiosk.

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I'm surprised the memorial was allowed on the Common at all, since it was made clear years ago by the removal of The Partisans statue that only memorials to Americans would be tolerated.

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None of the Greenway was to have any memorials. But the rotating polygonal monolith stands.

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The soldier's and sailors' monument is usually covered and graffiti and drug addled derelicts. The statues were toppled by anti-war vandals in 2004 and never repaired/replaced. So even memorials for Americans aren't well treated on the Common.

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A year has gone by, and there doesn't seem to be any public news about the status of the Anne Frank sapling? Is there any recent news as to how this tree is doing and what has or will become of it.
This tree was planted at Boston Common 2013 and removed due to health issues?

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That says they took the sapling back to the Parks greenhouse but it was deader than dead and that was that.

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