Cool Tree
A map of trees people think are cool, for whatever reason.
Somebody sees a tree worth looking at, photographs it, and says why. It goes on the map. Anybody nearby can go and see it.
How it works
- 1Find oneTap Add a tree, photograph it, and say why it's worth seeing. A photo already on your phone works too: it usually knows where it was taken.
- 2Go and see other people'sThe Trees tab lists everything people have found, with how far each one is. Plan a walk, at the top of it, maps a short route to the ones you haven't seen. Tap I've been when you get there.
- 3Or go and find a big oneGreat trees, also under Trees, is the ancient and veteran trees on record with the Woodland Trust, nearest first, with how far round the trunk is. Go and look, photograph it, and it joins the map as a Cool Tree found by you, and it stays an ancient one.
- 4Add to themAnybody can add photos and notes to anybody's tree, so they build up over the seasons.
Keep it on your home screen
There’s nothing to download from an app store. This adds an icon that opens Cool Tree full screen, straight from your phone, exactly like an app.
On an iPhone, in Safari
Tap the Share button (the square with an arrow, at the bottom of the screen), scroll down, then tap Add to Home Screen.
On Android, in Chrome
Tap the ⋮ menu (top right), then Add to Home screen or Install app, whichever your phone offers.
This has to be done from Safari on an iPhone and Chrome on Android. Opening the link inside Instagram, WhatsApp or another app’s built in browser usually hides this option; tap the menu in that app and choose Open in Safari or Open in Chrome first.
Three things worth knowing
It works without signal. A tree saved in a wood waits on your phone and uploads itself later.
Cool is for somebody else. It answers “should another person walk over and look at this?”, so you can’t call your own tree cool, and there’s no button on it asking you to. The same goes for I’ve been: you were standing under your own tree when you put it on the map.
Friends see your finds. Add somebody and their trees show up on your map, and yours on theirs. Friends who have added each other can also see which trees they’ve been to see; that one is a switch in Settings, on to begin with, and nobody who isn’t a friend ever sees it.
Maps by OpenStreetMap contributors. Species identification by Pl@ntNet, with background from Wikipedia. Identifications are a guess and the app says how sure it is.
The brown pins on the map are ancient and veteran trees on record with the Woodland Trust, and a green pin with a brown middle is one of them that somebody here has found. Behind the scenes there are also 1.1 million London street trees from the boroughs’ own surveys, which is how the app can tell you what species is already recorded where you are standing, and what grows on your street.