Treasure Trees – Tagging Mecklenburg County’s largest, most historic trees

Are you thinking about creating a legacy tree program for your city or county? Then check out what Mecklenburg County in Charlotte, NC did with their Treasure Tree Program!

The original tree program started in the 1989 and went until 2000 with 123 treasure trees listed. It eventually stopped with no one to run it. Fortunately, the program was picked back up and is now bringing in even more treasure trees! The new Treasure Trees Program seeks to locate the original treasure trees and tell their stories, as well as recognize a new generation of special trees and share their ecological importance to the region’s environment. Local tree enthusiasts, private arborists, city of Charlotte staff and TreesCharlotte representatives make up the program’s committee.

The original tree program used hand-stamped aluminum tags with a tree identification number. Many of the old tags were faded, and some had even been swallowed by the trees as the tree grew around the tag. The new Treasure Tree Program wanted to replace the old tags and modernize the tags to include more information about the tree to educate the public. That is when they contacted National Band & Tag for their new tags! Our UV Stable Arboretum Tree Tags can be customized in any way you want. The Treasure Tree Program choose to have the tree common name, scientific name, and a QR code that would lead visitors straight to a web page dedicated to each tree. Also, to avoid losing tags to tree growth again, they used NB&T’s aluminum nails with stainless steel springs to mount the tags off the tree surface about an inch to allow for future growth.

Brett Dupree, Tree Hunter for the program stated, “We have seen parents and kids utilize the QR codes on our program trees to visit the web pages and learn more about the trees and the program itself, so this tagging solution has been a big win for us.” The new and improved Treasure Tree Program is currently up to 147 trees.

To learn more, check out their website: https://treescharlotte.org/treasuretrees/

View their self-guided tree tours here: www.treescharlotte.org/self-guided-tours

Photo Credit: Brett Dupree