How KMC saved a 100-year-old tree at Medical College

In China and Japan, full grown trees are regularly transplanted. In India we simply cut hundreds of trees to pave the way for some highway or bridge, little realizing that saplings planted to compensate felling of large grown trees do not help. Large grown trees give us that volume of oxygen that cannot be compensated with small saplings. Kolkata Municipal Corporation has set an example yesterday by saving a tree that was to be felled. They transplanted it on the Medical College campus.

This is a 100-year-old Haritaki tree from the days of the British Raj and had to be uprooted for setting up a power station within the campus. The state forest department had passed the order to fell 3 large trees including this Haritaki tree to make way for infrastructure development. However, the hospital authorities decided to save the tree as it had witnessed the building of Medical College that also happens to be Asia’s first medical college. They thus sought the help of KMC. The authorities readily accepted the proposal and sent a transplant team. It was definitely a challenge to transplant such a huge tree that is around 25 ft tall, now the tree has got new life. It has been administered with certain medicines to prevent growth of fungus. The next one month is crucial as everyone will keep a strict vigil on the health of the tree.