Dozens of chanting children and their teachers besieged the Town Hall last month in protest at the felling of a 100-year-old plane tree which had stood at the corner of their Yialos secondary school.

The children carried banners reading "They cut our tree - they cut our history".  And indeed, the massive tree had been a fond memory for past pupils as well as present ones  - and many of the local adults were equally angry when they discovered that the tree, which had been there since before their own childhood, had been cut

down.

As one parent told the Visitor "I remember that tree from when I was at school. It was beautiful, and no-one had the right to destroy it.Trees are very precious things on Symi, and unless it had begun to present any kind of danger - which it certainly did not - then it should have been left alone.
It was a fine, healthy, specimen".
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It appears that because some kind of official mis-understanding the