The Anne Frank tree ( nl, Anne Frankboom or, incorrectly, ''Anne Frank boom'') was a

horse-chestnut tree The genus ''Aesculus'' ( or ), with species called buckeye and horse chestnut, comprises 13–19 species of flowering plants in the family Sapindaceae. They are trees and shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with six species ...

(''Aesculus hippocastanum'') in the city center of

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

that was featured in

Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...

's ''

The Diary of a Young Girl ''The Diary of a Young Girl'', also known as ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Neth ...

''. Anne Frank described the tree from The Annexe, the building where she and her family were hiding from the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Over the years, the tree deteriorated significantly due to both a fungus and a

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

infestation. The

Borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Amsterdam Centrum declared that the tree had to be cut down on 20 November 2007 due to the risk that it could otherwise fall down. However, on 21 November 2007, a judge issued a temporary injunction stopping the removal. The Foundation and the neighbours developed an alternative plan to save the tree. The neighbours and supporters formed the Foundation Support Anne Frank Tree which carried out the suggested supporting construction and took over the maintenance of the tree. On 23 August 2010, the tree was blown down by high winds during a storm, breaking off approximately above ground. It fell across a garden wall and damaged garden sheds but did not damage anything else. The tree was estimated to be between 150 and 170 years old.

Anne Frank

The tree is mentioned three times in

's diary ''

''. On 23 February 1944, she writes about the tree:

Otto Frank Otto Heinrich Frank (12 May 1889 – 19 August 1980) was a German businessman who later became a resident of the Netherlands and Switzerland. He was the father of Anne and Margot Frank and husband of Edith Frank, and was the sole member of ...

, Anne's father, described his thoughts upon reading the diary for the first time in a 1968 speech. He described his surprise at learning of the tree's importance to Anne as follows:

Interactive project

The ''Anne Frank Tree'' is also the name of an interactive project started by the

Anne Frank House The Anne Frank House ( nl, Anne Frank Huis) is a writer's house and biographical museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank. The building is located on a canal called the Prinsengracht, close to the Westerkerk, in central Amsterdam ...

in 2006, when it was opened by

Emma Thompson Dame Emma Thompson (born 15 April 1959) is a British actress. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she has received numerous accolades throughout her four-decade-long career, including two Academy Awards, two British A ...

. Visitors to the museum are able to leave their name and location on a "leaf" of the tree, showing their affinity with Anne Frank. Part of the intended audience of the on-line project are students of the more than 200 schools in the world named after Anne Frank.

Decline

Concerns about the tree's health date back to at least 1993, when a soil analysis revealed that leakage from a nearby underground domestic fuel tank was endangering the tree's root system. The city of Amsterdam spent €160,000 on a soil sanitation program to save the tree. For the last several years, the tree was attacked by a particularly aggressive fungus (''

Ganoderma applanatum ''Ganoderma applanatum'' (the artist's bracket, artist's conk, artist's fungus or bear bread) is a bracket fungus with a cosmopolitan distribution. Description This fungus is parasitic and saprophytic, and grows as a mycelium within the wood o ...

'', also called "Artist's Conk" or "Artist's Bracket") which rotted the wood and undermined the tree's stability. Additionally,

horse-chestnut leaf miner The horse-chestnut leaf miner (''Cameraria ohridella'') is a leaf-mining moth of the family Gracillariidae. The horse-chestnut leaf miner was first observed in North Macedonia in 1984, and was described as a new species in 1986.

moth

caterpillar Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Sym ...

s (''Cameraria ohridella'') ate the tree's leaves, causing them to turn brown prematurely and fall off. On 26 May 2005, the tree's

crown A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...

was drastically trimmed after a six-month study by

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

s concluded that this was the best way to ensure the tree's stability. However, the fungal disease continued to thrive, and a 2006 study estimated that 42% of the wood was rotten. Some botanists concluded that the tree's death was unavoidable and the owner of the property decided to ask for a permit to cut the tree down in order to eliminate the risk of the huge tree collapsing. In September 2007, an appeals panel made two decisions: one upholding the right of the tree's owner to have it cut down any time in the next two years, and one granting a request by the country's Trees Institute to investigate the possibility of saving it. Property owner Henric Pomes of Keizersgracht 188, adjacent to the building that is now the Anne Frank Museum, agreed to wait for the institute's proposal, due before 1 January 2008. On 2 October 2007, and later the Dutch Tree Foundation ( nl, Bomenstichting), was involved in the discussions. On 15 November 2007, it claimed the tree was healthy enough to cause no danger, based upon second opinion analysis by Neville Fay (a famous English expert of ancient trees) and by Frits Gielissen (a Dutch expert from O.B.T.A. De Linde). On 13 November 2007, the Borough Amsterdam-Centrum declared that it would cut down the tree on 21 November 2007. The next day, a pulling test was banned, but four days after that, this assessment of the strength of the tree was conducted. Boom-KCB, an engineering firm specialized in trees, determined that the tree was "storm-proof", and able to sustain itself, eliminating the need for outside interference as it did not pose a danger for the public. A court hearing involving the Tree Foundation was held the day before the scheduled removal. On 21 November 2007, it was decided to stop the removal. On the same day, the Borough and the Anne Frank Foundation held a press conference during which they repeated their claim that there existed an "acute danger". They urged the

Mayor of Amsterdam Below is a list of mayors (Dutch: ''burgemeesters'') of Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands. The city had four burgomasters, serving four years. Since 1389 the mayors were elected on 1 February. In the 17th and 18th century, a new mayor was ele ...

, Job Cohen, to proceed with emergency cutting. On 17 December 2007, the working committee Support Anne Frank Tree presented its alternative plan to preserve the tree (the report has English abstracts & conclusions) which included a construction to prevent the trunk from breaking down. Some weeks later, tree experts from both sides presented a joint evaluation of the tree. Their judgment was that the tree had a life expectancy of at least 5–15 years. To ensure safety, the supporting construction should be built. In May 2008 the supporting structure was finished: it was designed to help the tree to survive at least five more years. On 23 August 2010, the tree was blown over in a rain-and-gale storm, breaking off about a meter above the ground. It fell across a garden wall and damaged garden sheds but did not damage anything else. The next day, it was reported that a small side shoot was growing out of the stump below where it broke, and it is hoped that it will grow into a new tree. There are plans to keep large pieces of the fallen trunk and its large branches. The fallen tree is estimated to weigh about 27

metric ton The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton (United States c ...

s. Some of the images in the Reuters report show, for most of the cross-section of the trunk, the characteristic fracture pattern of decayed wood across all the trunk cross-section except a thin rim of sapwood. The fallen wood has now been removed.

Saplings

Thirteen

sapling In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

s from the tree have been distributed in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to museums, schools, parks and

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

remembrance centers through a project led b
The Anne Frank Center USA
The first sapling was planted in April 2013 at

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis The Children's Museum of Indianapolis is the world's largest children's museum. It is located at 3000 North Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana in the United Northwest Area neighborhood of the city. The museum is accredited by the American Al ...

. Other saplings were sent to

Liberty Park Liberty Park is a elevated public park at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City, overlooking the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan. The park, which opened on June 29, 2016, is located above the World Trad ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, honoring victims of

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

; a

Little Rock, Arkansas (The Little Rock, The "Little Rock") , government_type = council-manager government, Council-manager , leader_title = List of mayors of Little Rock, Arkansas, Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_ ...

school that was the center of a desegregation battle; the Clinton Presidential Center, also in Little Rock, in partnership with the city's Congregation B'nai Israel Sisterhood; and sites in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

and

Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...

. In the summer of 2010, a sapling was planted in Batsford Arboretum near Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos, UK, a poignant memorial to one of the victims of a regime that Diana and

Unity Mitford Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford (8 August 1914 – 28 May 1948) was a British socialite, known for her relationship with Adolf Hitler. Both in Great Britain and Germany, she was a prominent supporter of Nazism, fascism and antisemitism, and belo ...

regarded so highly. Diana and Unity were the daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale a former owner of Batsford. On 25 February 2015, a sapling was planted in

Lister Park Lister Park (also known as Manningham Park) is a picturesque public park in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, between Manningham, Heaton and Frizinghall. It has won various national awards. About the park It is situated about a mile outsid ...

, Bradford, UK. Another of the tree's saplings grows in front of the Holocaust Education Center in Fukuyama, Japan; it was planted in January 2011.

References

External links

Anne Frank Tree
at the website of the

Anne Frank Foundation The Anne Frank Foundation ( nl, Anne Frank Stichting) is a foundation in the Netherlands originally established to maintain the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. This foundation also advocates the fight against antisemitism and racism and publishes t ...