Stopped by a small vineyard / winery last week. Was standing outside chatting with the owner/winemaker when I stopped mid-sentence without thinking and uttered a "holy crap"...
We were standing in the garden next to the house... underneath a large old tree... and I suddenly became aware that it was a cherry.
It was obviously a tree with some risks associated with it... large limbs leaning out over the house, clearly looking like they're going to fall on the house... sometime... likely soon. They said... "yeah, but, we can't bring ourselves to take it down".
The large "limbs" on the tree were joined around and rose straight from the base, each bigger than you could reach around... and then spread outwards. But, they weren't "limbs" exactly... rather than the remnant joined circle of now very mature sports that had long ago formed up in a ring around the core of the original tree... which was still there as a long dead core still poking up from inside the ring. The "limbs" were probably 60 years old... the visible core, poking out 10 feet above ground, was much larger around, and was probably already at least that old before the sports started. I'd be surprised if it wasn't 150 years old... but it could be much older.
The geometry of it is questionable... and each "limb" leans away from the dead core... but, each is healthy enough otherwise. It was in full flower, and, they say, makes a large crop of tart fruit each year... all of which goes to the birds... given no one wants to climb two stories up into a weak tree to try to net it...
I'll do some digging and see what I can learn about the history of the site... and maybe find a probable limit on its age that way...
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