One of 11 saplings from that tree is growing in CNY.
View full sizeIn this April 7, 2008 file photo cranes carrying workers stretch over towards a chestnut tree in a courtyard behind The Anne Frank House museum as work to prop up the tree that once comforted Anne Frank began in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The monumental chestnut tree has fallen over on Monday, Aug. 23, 2010, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank Museum says. The 27-ton tree was encased in a steel tripod as a precaution of the danger it might fall. The tree's trunk snapped close to the ground and it toppled into neighboring gardens, damaging several sheds. No one was hurt.AMSTERDAM (AP) -- The monumental chestnut tree that cheered Anne Frank while she was in hiding from the Nazis was toppled by wind and heavy rain on Monday.
The once mighty tree, now diseased and rotted through the trunk, snapped about 3 feet (1 meter) above ground and crashed across several gardens. It damaged several sheds, but nearby buildings - including the Anne Frank House museum - escaped unscathed. No one was injured, a museum spokeswoman said.
"Someone yelled, 'It's falling. The tree is falling,' and then you heard it go down," said museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart. "Luckily no one was hurt."
A global campaign to save the chestnut, widely known as The Anne Frank Tree, was launched in 2007 after city officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it felled. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court.
The 150-year-old tree suffered from fungus and moths that had caused more than half its trunk to rot.
Two years ago city workmen encased the trunk in a steel support system to prevent it from falling, but that failed under windy weather Monday.
Many clones of the tree have been taken, including 11 planted at sites around the United States and 150 at a park in Amsterdam. It is not clear whether a new tree will replace the original one on the same spot, since it rests on property belonging to a neighbor.
One of those 11 sites is Southern Cayuga School District, where a tree was planted at the district's middle school, about 15 miles south of Auburn in Poplar Ridge.