If you can't tell an oak from a lime tree, or a sycamore from a London plane, this should be just up your street.
An online mapping tool featuring the location and species of over 700,000 trees in London has had an enormous increase in visitors to its site since lockdown began, as people seek to make their daily walks more experiential. And tree huggers also have the benefit of knowing what type of tree is the lucky recipient of their attention.
TreeTalk, which creates a walk specific to a user’s location and identifies trees on the route, is not getting calls for the app in other cities, both in the UK and overseas, including USA, India and Australia.
In May alone, TreeTalk says there were 16,000 requests from users to create a personalised tree walk and 10,000 visitors a week to the site - 5,000% increase on the same period last year.
TreeTalk uses data released by the Mayor of London’s environment team and combines it with information provided by the city’s boroughs and Transport for London, which plants and maintains trees on the capital’s roads.