Looking for an ancient tree worth a detour? There’s an app for that

While most people spend their holidays sightseeing or lazing by a pool, Hidde Burgmans would rather seek out special trees.

While not an expert in the subject, the 37-year-old from Baarn in the Netherlands has developed what he cheerfully admits is something of an obsession. He even managed to propose to his girlfriend, Nadia Roeleveld, under a particularly special cedar in Japan: “My fiancee always laughs, because she’s like, ‘OK, we have to make a detour again because Hidde found another big tree’.”

Burgmans is the creator of Ancient Trees, an app that maps remarkable old trees around the world and shows users which specimens are nearby. Users upload their favourites, along with photos and descriptions, and add the ones they visit to their profile. Trees featured range from Malaysian baobabs to the Fortingall yew in Perthshire, Scotland, which is thought to be about 5,000 years old.

The idea for the app took root on work trips to Lisbon. With time to kill between meetings, Burgmans wandered through the city’s parks and found himself among century-old jacarandas and wild figs. But he soon realised there was no obvious way of seeking out other special trees, nor a means of recording and sharing his finds.

He built the app himself using his skills from his day job as a digital designer. Instead of trying to list every tree, the app is a curated map of the most quirky and intriguing finds. “The general rule I have for the platform is that it’s for trees that are ‘worth a detour’,” he said.

Burgmans said the early take-up on the app had been a pleasant surprise and each day he could see who has been out spotting trees. “On Monday I saw that somebody photographed five trees in Paris. On Tuesday somebody photographed a tree in Edinburgh. Today, someone in Freiburg. That just makes me happy,” he said.

“I thought it was quite a niche, geeky thing, but apparently more people are interested in ancient trees than I thought.”

Dan Crowley, a dendrologist who goes by @thetreespotter on Instagram, said the Woodland Trust maintained an Ancient Tree Inventory for the UK but the global reach of Burgmans’s app added an extra dimension.

“Anything that gets more people interested in trees is a good thing,” Crowley said. “We know that being around trees is scientifically proven to be a good thing for us, so the more people we have looking at them, the better.”

Crowley said trees needed the extra attention during “a tough time”, with hot and dry summers leaving them stressed.

“There’s never been a more important time to focus on trees,” he said. “A community of people photographing and observing trees through the seasons is how we learn about them. The more people who notice the trees around them, the more likely those trees are to be looked after.”

Burgmans hopes the app will extend to all corners of the world, with walking routes linking the best trees in each city. “If it could be the AllTrails [walking app] for tree lovers, that would be the dream,” he said.