So as you may have heard it is Tree Week here at Atlas Obscura and today our

producer Julia Russo is going to bring you a really sweet story. I think you're

going to like it. I also have a little request that I'm going to come and ask you about at the end of the show. All right. Enjoy the episode.

Back in 2012 Australia had a problem. The country was dry as a bone. The continent had endured

more than a decade of drought and this was very bad news for Australia's trees.

In fact, the city-owned

owned to lose almost a third of its trees over the course of the next 10 years.

And with over 70,000 city-owned trees in Melbourne, the city was going to need all the

help it could get.

So Melbourne came up with a mapping system. Each of the The city's

's tree's trees would get and

the city's trees would get an ID number and an email address.

The idea was that if someone walked along and noticed something wrong with the

tree, they could send an email to alert the city of the issue.

And perhaps you wouldn't expect a program like this

to garner a lot of responses.

But back at the city's offices, the emails started flooding in.

Except, the emails that Mountvernian sent were not what the city expected. The emails were love letters to the trees like this one.

Dear Morton Bay Fig. to the trees, like this one.

Dear Morton Bay Fig, you are beautiful.

Sometimes I sit or walk under you and feel happier.

I love the way the light looks through your leaves and how your branches come down so low and wide.

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