There seems to be quite the split of opinion on public fruit trees.
I encountered something like this when I planted a row of red currents at the front of our property. My mother-in-law said "You can't plant those there, people will take the fruit" whereas my thinking was "If I plant these here, people can take the fruit"
One of my favorite parts of visiting family in Puerto Rico is the ability to stop almost anywhere and pick up a free, fresh mango/passion fruit/papaya/etc.. It’s a beautiful thing to experience nature providing at such scale
It's truly abundance when there's so much that you don't have to ever think about running out, probably so much that it even overwhelms those mentioned in the other comments who would otherwise try to harvest as many as they could.
Reminds me of a saying I heard while living in upstate New York as a kid:
You know you live in a small town when, if you leave your windows rolled down in your car at the supermarket, you come back out to find a bag of zucchini on your front seat.
The real risk isn’t even people taking the fruit. Its rats you need to worry about. I like my fruit trees but there is at least one rat I know of that I am directly sustaining every night with this tree. Not sure what I can even do for this as if I ever catch this rat, another will take its place. Calories are on the table here, the environment is going to grow to consume that excess I’ve introduced to the local area.
A guy had a cherry tree planted nearby, and after the first few people picked the bottom ~2.5 meters, the rest started pulling and breaking down branches to reach cherries higher up, climbing over the hedge, breaking branches there too, and of course left the branches on the ground for the owner to clear.
He still regrets not planting it further away from the street, unreachable to shitty people.
A lot of it depends where you are. I lived near the downtown core of a large city, and people would (usually gently) pick the fruit off the tree next to the sidewalk. Few would venture onto the property itself, even though there was no fence and an abundance of fruit trees. It was not much of a bother. I currently live near the downtown core of a small city. You could go to bed one night with an abundance of fruit, far from the street, and awake the next day to find nothing.
I think they are awesome but once you have it publicly mapped that one person will make it their biz to harvest for free all they can. The kind who has a house and a car but will go and grab all samplers or free food handouts and the like out of principle. Then locals will no longer benefit
There's a crew like that for apple trees in Glasgow! They rack up boxes and boxes from all around the city. Then they run events where you can press apples, and all the fresh juice gets given away.
It doesn't. It's not given away to the same locals, so it's irrelevant. If I strip raid your fruit tree of fruit and give it away to people who knows where, your end result you have no fruit. So "do locals not mind" is an important question. Maybe you personally don't care but some people need to eat.
Though I guess some of you here would say supporting such people with public property is a bad idea. Let's give the fruit to a guy with an online fruit tree map and a car instead.
When I was a child we would go on trips to pick mushrooms and fruit with family. As I grew older more often there was less and less or nothing left to pick in accessible places. Locals know a "secret place" (not really) but then someone puts it up online for internet points and whoosh.
Not a problem for us, we didn't really need them (middle class), it was far enough away of the town that it does not hurt a random hungry person, we could just drive around intil we find another place (was getting more and more difficult already 15 years ago). But not everyone is as lucky
This is so sad to me, but thankfully, not all of us are like this.
My neighborhood has a small park that features a pear tree and a plethora of frost grapes. My wife and I are of a conservationist bent, so we monitor the plants in the park for any bad news and help keep the trails manicured. I can say that pear tree and grapes are both used wisely and with others in mind, as people from the neighborhood show up to take only what they need. One lady does take a lot, but she makes terrific jams then passes them around.
It's quite a positive culture around this park, and it was in place long before we moved there. It also goes against everything I otherwise tend to experience with my fellow Americans, namely greed and gluttony of consumerism.
That's awesome. Do you have tons of fruit trees around in general? If not, do you think your idyllic situation is possibly because your trees are not listed on a map?
Do you think a person who really needs to eat right now and the only option is picked fruit can also be the person who has access to a website with fruit tree map and a car to get there?
Yep, I certainly would prefer food get thrown away then for somebody to drive up to my property, harvest all of the fruit, and then go and sell it to other people.
However, that's less about deserving it, and more about the food being taken for someone's personal profit.
I also think most people would be happy for the food to go to those in need, but then for make reasons we have laws or business policies that forbid it... Starbucks doesn't want to pay 10 million dollars because an employee gave a homeless person food they we're allergic to... We do love lawsuits here..
Yea, OP's point is that it's not about deserving it, it's that there's always someone who thinks anything available for free means that they can just take the whole lot for themselves, and/or profit from it.
I remember the last company I worked for that tried the whole "Free food if you stay a little late" thing. They'd buy a few boxes of pizzas and set them out int he break room with the expectation that you'd take a slice or two. Well, of course, eventually one or two people started taking entire boxes home for themselves and then that "perk" inevitably ended.
Is this abuse? Were people taking these boxes as soon as they were delivered, or were people taking home boxes of leftovers? I don't think I've ever been to an event of any sort which had ordered pizzas and saw someone just take a box before anyone could get to it. But most events I've been to which had pizzas had intentionally ordered extra boxes, and it's always encouraged for someone to take home extras in those cases.
Price for a box of pizza? Vs price for a hour of overtime?
Yeah this sounds bad. If the company stops giving “free” pizza bc/ someone takes not 1/8 of a pizza but 1 pizza, then you know how much they value, or rather do not value your time.
Removing the perk was absolutely not about the cost of the pizza which was trivial, or the extra productivity, it was about the few jerks abusing it. Of course, they could have bought 5X more pizza, and then the jerks would have walked out with 5 pizza boxes instead of one.
Same mentality is why we can't leave a basket of unattended candy outside the house on Halloween, for Trick-Or-Treaters to share: Inevitably someone will just take the whole basket. It's not about the cost of the candy, it's about not enabling jerks.
You can think about the company spending too little on pizza or you can think about people being selfish jerks to each other.
When in your local park there are no benches to sit because half of them were dismantled and sold for scrap (true story) you can think how government spends too little on park maintenance or policing, or you can think how people are being selfish jerks to each other.
By the way if you know how plants grow and spread "get eaten by humans and pooped into sewer" is not always the best reproduction strategy and so throwing away is not always a waste.
And judging that some people don't deserve something is not always wrong unless you are philosophical extremist. If you have so many fruit trees around that anyone in need can pick one any time you probably don't live in an area where a map of fruit trees is useful. It's catch-22 isn't it?
> And judging that some people don't deserve something is not always wrong unless you are philosophical extremist.
You are missing the point - ofcourse those people exist, some people don’t deserve to breathe, think terrible crimes
The problems are:
1 - you are so preoccupied with that 1 guy who ‘does not deserve’ does not get free fruit, that you make life worse for 1,000 people who do
2 - are you the right person to judge who ‘deserves’ and who ‘doesn’t’. Who is the right person to judge? What if they are wrong? Who judges the judges?
I'm not the one judging. You can say it's logic doing the judging. Homeless in the area who have to eat but can afford nothing and local kids, vs the guy with an online fruit tree map and a car and a bunch of time to raid trees. "Deserves" is relative.
A fun coincidence - I saw this link right after jumping off the plane from a trip to Hiiumaa and Saaremaa in Estonia. Public apple trees are everywhere. Additionally, people leave some of their apples in boxes for everyone to take for free - some are in front of houses and shop, others on public bus stops etc. Such a lovely tradition.
When I went to high school, I'd walk through an allotment garden to get to school. Always great for a snack on the way home, someone had amazing raspberries! Some lovely cherry trees as well as several varieties of apples.
Public? Free? Pschht, everyone knows that what's outside the fence is free for the taking!
But there were also tons of fruit trees in nature in the city. Went jogging one time at a jogging trail, saw chanterelles in the forest, came back with my t-shirt full of tasty, tasty mushrooms.
If you've grown up with always being able to pick fruits and berries and mushrooms in nature, maps like this are so weird. Why would you need a map? Nature is full of it?
Oh, you're not allowed? Oh, you can't access it? Oh, there aren't any around, really? How sad.
Theres a ton of fig and dates in socal people don’t pick. That being said its hard to pick these trees. They might be located in clumsy areas like by some razor wire in a parking lot. You aren’t sure when its time to harvest unless you know this tree well. Harvesting might not even be practical considering the best fruit is picked not dropped and picked up, and these trees could be huge. Then of course these being unsprayed trees the fruit is going to be full of wasp larvae at least for the figs. Then the rats will eat most of whatever is there thats worth eating anyhow before you realize its there.
Commercially its a different story. Trees are planted and pruned to maintain easy harvesting. They are sprayed and rodents managed, as well as being overall outproduced by the yield on the farm. Fruit trees are a lot of work. Even literal money growing on trees would be work, against what the saying might imply.
Spain has plenty of oranges growing in the middle of a public street, most of them are perfectly edible. If fruit trees are a common presence in the city, people learn when to pick what, it becomes common knowledge, it’s not rocket science.
> You aren’t sure when it is time to harvest unless you know this tree well.
This is a big issue. Every bush and tree I've added to my yard is a learning experience about what "ripe" means and when to harvest. The bright red plums are enticing to the eye but bitter and chalky. Perfect blue blueberries that taste like lemons.
Unattended apple trees can create rotting apples on the ground, certainly. Those are admittedly not pretty, but in Central Russia (and, presumably, in Estonia, which is not that far off climate- and fauna-wise) they’re just one more layer of soil by spring. Do hotter temperatures or different wildlife make them a bigger problem in the US somehow?
Here in Antwerp there's a long street (the Markgravelei) lined with cornelian cherries (Cornus mas).
I think most people around here don't know that they're edible and anyway that fruit is somewhat of a hassle to pick and prepare, but anyway once they're ripe they fall on the sidewalk and on cars, staining everything red, making the sidewalks slippery and leaving seeds behind. And there's no wild life to speak of, maybe some rats but not many, and birds don't seem to eat the fallen fruit. Wasps do, but it's not a positive point.
There's no soil (except a ~1m² square around each tree) because it's just a street in the city so although I don't find them a bother and I can pick a fruit from time to time while walking, I can well understand why people who live in this street would complain about it.
I can't understand what went through the mind of people who chose to plant these trees here. I think it's almost as bad as if those were mulberry trees (relative to staining power).
But it's just a remark on how fruit trees can be annoying to some people, for my part I used to live in another city where I was able to pick blackberries and raspberries on my way to work or to the supermarket, sometimes pears, and it was great. And in autumn I pick chestnuts here. Not too often because of PFAS pollution.
There is a mulberry tree right next to a bus station where I live. Between the people waiting for the bus and birds I almost never manage to eat the fruit and there is none on the ground.
Probably a situation with stuck up neighbors most of the time. If you’ve heard of the homeowners association problem in the USA, this could be the cause. Having rotting fruit is fine for the soil and everything, but the stick up the butt neighbors or HOA probably would complain or ban the practice. US Americans are pretty separated from nature in their big suburbs.
HOA's can actually work really well, they just seemed to have taken a horrible turn somewhere in the USA. "HOA"s in South Africa are called "Sectional Titles", and they're pretty reasonable. They allow for (if you ask me) more efficient use of common resources (garden services, security, etc). Do they have politics, drama and the occasional Karen? Of course, but every grouping of individuals has that as it's just human nature.
I'd be ok with something like that, but I think I'd need neighbors who were interested in having common resources in the first place.
Where we've got it wrong is that only thing we have in common is a shared interest in how the market perceives us, and since markets are batshit crazy, we end up doing crazy things like maintaining a lawn in a drought just for the aesthetics of it. If there were actually something we had in common, like I dunno a lathe or something, there would be something with practical considerations around which to anchor HOA policy.
(bias note: I don't live in an HOA, but my friends seem to hate it an I'm offended by the lack of character/sense in the HOA-governed neighborhoods that surround mine.)
Easy just live in a neighborhood built before 1970. Odds are if you work in a city these are available in spades in a reasonable distance to work. Nicer homes and neighborhoods than the newer plastic siding stuff thats come since too.
It depends on the state. Some seem to love them (coughFloridacough) and others dislike them.
Afaik, most of them are vestigial instruments left over from master planned development financing, that gave the developers X years of voting control in order to recoup some part of their investment.
> Do hotter temperatures or different wildlife make them a bigger problem in the US somehow?
In many places, people worry about bugs and rats eating them, and the ones that don't get eaten start to rot and grow moldy. Generally just things people don't like in a dense city.
Any rotting fruit that falls on the ground will attract many animals and bugs. Lots of flies and wasps, as well as bigger animals like rats or raccoons. Depends on the city for the specific animal, but seems like there are plenty of animals in big cities (at least here in the US) - NYC famously has rats, for example.
It is more likely to be seen as messy, just aesthetics. Another big reason for chopping down fruit trees in urban areas is they mess up cars that are parked under them.
There's a spot in St. Paul, MN that I drive by sometimes that has had treefall apples all over the sidewalk for the last few weeks. I'm surprised they're left on the tree for that long, since it's in a pretty busy area.
Yeah, I guess. People are spoiled by the appearance of grocery store produce. We have a bunch of apple trees that produce delicious fruit. I just eat around the worms and bug-bitten spots.
Not sure if it is really sanitization issue. But certainly perceived one - it can be mess.
This was not unique to US. I remember on the other side of the Iron Curtain we planted in cities mostly just male dioecious trees.
Finally no fruit ...just pollen everywhere. (Good luck with allergies)
> "I presume that Americans always take the poo of their beloved pets from the streets."
They're supposed to by law (and just good old-fashioned manners), and many do clean up after their pets, but anywhere you go there's always gotta be at least one jerkwad that doesn't care one little bit about anything beyond the tip of their own nose.
I live in the Netherlands but come from South of France. First thing I did when buying a house was to create a "aromatic garden" in front of my house. Oregano, thyme, lavender, ....
No only the smell is amazing in the summer and it reminds me of home, but it's been so cool to see people come and pluck from it for their cooking. It's been my hope all along.
I'm glad to see several fig trees in Crete on the map. Just the other day I was thinking it would be cool to have an app mapping them.
Fig trees located in fields are considered public by tradition in Crete. I.e. it's fair game to stop by and grab some fruit, even if you cross into private property. This tradition originates from older days, where farmers/shepherds were travelling the island on foot or riding donkeys, often sleeping away from home. Fig trees were established as the unofficial roadside snack bars because of the delicious fruit, but more importantly because they thrive on the rough terrain without need for human care.
This feels like it might have unintended consequences. My mom lives in a neighborhood where lots of people have fruit trees and allow neighbors to take some because none of them could eat all of the fruit. But, once in while, some people outside the community drive in an clear out the trees abusing the system. Will a map of public trees increase incidents like that?
We're dismissive of "security through obscurity", but cost functions and diffusive compartmentalization are structural components of many systems. Yet exploring innovative approaches to mitigate the costs of our barrier reductions don't seem to get much discussion.
This has happened for free RV camping spots. After the internet occupied the space, you can't find a peaceful area to camp anymore. In fact many places in AZ closed due to people just dumping their black tanks straight up on the land.
I have an alley of cherry trees nearby. It's really nice and there is plenty for everyone. Theoretically. But every year a bunch of "professionals" appear and collect everything. Probably to sell them somewhere. If that weren't enough, they do a lot of damage to the trees. It's just sad.
Around me I see some people that are very dedicated to exploiting these fruits. They’ll show up with a large group - children, friends, family - and systematically pick everything clean to fill their buckets. It’s really disappointing because they clearly don’t need that much, there’s nothing left for others, and there’s nothing left for wildlife. The worst thing is they usually don’t pay any attention to whether the fruit is ready to be harvested or not - they just grab it all - and that means they’re not likely to get something tasty even for themselves. But there is a mindset to get them before anyone else does, so they take them anyways. Personally I think it is better if these aren’t mapped out, so at least locals who are invested in their community have a chance to pick them responsibly. These maps end up just being used by the exploitative people.
And unfortunately the website has several entries that are in nature reserves where picking is absolutely not allowed. I mailed the owner of the website to let them know.
Do you have examples of nature reserves where this is not allowed. Here there are always rules and they vary alot between the reserves, but mostly you are allowed to pick fruits. Digging, breaking sticks and collecting rocks is forbidden almost everywhere.
I ask because this would be an interesting data to have in Openstreetmap or Wikidata, so you can easily know what rules govern what nature reserve.
I reckon the main thing is to use this free resource, someone valuing it is a good thing. If there's not enough for you or someone else, the right solution is to just plant more.
Someone brought this up in a child comment: what are the taste/health effects of near-permanent car traffic on fruit trees? The fruit of the public citrus trees in my city is pretty sour, but I don't know how much this is because of not being bred for sweetness, vs absorbing carbon monoxide, lead etc from passing cars.
Oregon is plastered with fruit trees just growing anywhere in public spaces. Most of the time wild trees aren't cared for enough to be useful but there are some exceptions, especially plums.
My best spots are fruits trees in the border of a villa, but you can catch some by climbing a bit. Usually proprietaries are ok, they don't eat them most of time. I'm foraging figs and persimons
The city also has some foraging clubs that are quite active. There are many more things to pick in the city's forests and parks: asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, currants, mushrooms, etc.
I have a fruit tree that provides a LOT of fruit. Half of it hangs over a fence. I don't mind if people come up and take some of the "low hanging fruit". However the other day I caught a lady halfway across the top of my fence, her torso was in my yard. This is a 6 foot tall fence. The problem is that if you give an inch, people take a mile.
Leaflet lets you add POIs on a OSM base layer map, you can also extract information from OSM about trees and bushes. If you use dumped data from OSM your data will be considered opendata as well so merging them will mean that you can not prevent other people from using you data.
In short: You do a overpass turbo query to dump data from OSM and import it into sqlite, build a GIS index, serve it as geojson, display that on a slippymap with leafletjs and write an end point to update the data.
Not Copenhagen, but if you are in the Seattle area you should think twice before gardening or eating fruit from free growing plants if you are south of Elliot Bay on the Puget Sound.
I knew someone that had a date tree in the far front corner of their yard. when it produced fruit a car would park there and like 4-5 people were picking all the fruit off the tree. they ended up cutting it down.
Just be prepared for someone to pick everything to sell or for their restaurant
For non-Germans: it's a (now colloquial) term for stealing in low quantities and out of direct necessity for your own/your family's survival. In that it alleviates the "base motives" part of the crime.
It's colloquially used in a sense that suggests it's legal or a legal gray area but it's also important to point out that there's no such exemption. "Mundraub" is simply minor theft (like shoplifting low-value products) which means you won't be prosecuted unless the injured party presses charges.
"Stealing" fruit (or flowers) from public flora is legal in a practical sense and under certain circumstances explicitly permitted if it does not involve trespass, you only take small quantities (which is not legally defined) and you do so carefully (which is also not legally defined). There's no requirement for immediately consuming the fruits on the spot (as the colloquial use of the term "Mundraub" suggests).
As with most of the things laypeople think of as being legal, it's more of a case of how much someone cares to enforce the law that makes it illegal. Also note that "public land" may not actually be public despite being publicly accessible. A lot of former nobility retained their land despite losing their titles and it's not always clear that this land is actually privately owned, especially if you're not from the area. Some is even tended by municipal governments as part of contractual agreements for allowing access to the public. Germany did not get rid of its nobility like e.g. France did even if we officially no longer recognize titles.
Hey i read some of that blogpost and I’m struggling to see your issue. I’m happy to agree it’s theft, but why should I mind it in cases where it’s a large corporation like home depot? Certainly I agree with your concern for personal gardens.
My blog post was moreso trying to explain what's legal vs what's right/wrong :)
If you're asking for my personal moral opinion, I think it's only a minor sin.
To me, it's like walking your dog without a leash. Of course your precious chihuahua doesn't need a leash, but then that somehow gives license for pomeranians, pugs, corgis, collies, terriers, pitbulls, german shephards, mastiffs, etc.
I don't think chihuahuas really need leashes. But sometimes I also don't trust people to decode nuance and to self-police. I want to live in a world where chihahuas are free and safe, and it seems like the best way to achieve that is through adherence to blanket policies. I'm still unsure if that makes it a moral issue though haha I'm not a philosopher
Commercial orchards are full of carefully pruned and closely spaced trees of known varieties and the margin is still not great on fruit production. It simply isn't a good way to make money to drive all around town picking unknown variety fruits with pest blemishes from irregular trees and then try to sell them. This is why maps like Falling Fruit have been around for years and yet if you walk around Berkeley (for example) you will still see plenty of fruit on trees.
that's better if it works better, but often profit is what works better as a motive. ultimately what matters is that the fruit finds its way to hungry mouths—and that those mouths are human mouths and not rat mouths!
systematic harvesting is much better at that; whatever kind of point-scoring exercise people engage in on the way is irrelevant
i don't want the rats in my neighborhood to return those nutrients to the environment, and i don't like tracking composting fruit into my apartment, though i guess if parrots eat the fruits while they're still on the tree that's okay
Nothing racist about preferring your ingroup. The arabs have a really good saying when it comes to this: Me against my brother. Me and my brother against my cousin. Me and my cousin against the world.
That is incredible difficult and basically boils down to resocialising people in another culture.
In the case of refugees we are facing the additional problem, that some originate from areas that are long time disfunctional, resulting in humans that never before have been socialized in a working society.
I believe that an important factor is to mix newcomers and locals, unfortunately that goes against the desire of both the government and the immigrants. Both want to centralize for efficiency resons.
I don't, generally, have the emotion of hate. I believe that hate is just a waste of emotional energy, and doesn't really serve a purpose. Further, I believe that if most people would stop and think, they would see that their hate is only serving to damage themselves, with zero positive results in every case.
And yet, I absolutely hate sites that don't let me go back to wherever I was before going to the site when I hit back, but instead reload prior same page clicks.
There seems to be quite the split of opinion on public fruit trees.
I encountered something like this when I planted a row of red currents at the front of our property. My mother-in-law said "You can't plant those there, people will take the fruit" whereas my thinking was "If I plant these here, people can take the fruit"
One of my favorite parts of visiting family in Puerto Rico is the ability to stop almost anywhere and pick up a free, fresh mango/passion fruit/papaya/etc.. It’s a beautiful thing to experience nature providing at such scale
It's truly abundance when there's so much that you don't have to ever think about running out, probably so much that it even overwhelms those mentioned in the other comments who would otherwise try to harvest as many as they could.
When I visited Guatemala you could so this with avocados. There are so many there that most just fall off the trees and rot on the ground.
So weird because even with a backyard veggie garden I'm always giving stuff away. Who can eat 20 cucumbers a week.
Reminds me of a saying I heard while living in upstate New York as a kid:
You know you live in a small town when, if you leave your windows rolled down in your car at the supermarket, you come back out to find a bag of zucchini on your front seat.
Farming is for the community. Love to see it.
The real risk isn’t even people taking the fruit. Its rats you need to worry about. I like my fruit trees but there is at least one rat I know of that I am directly sustaining every night with this tree. Not sure what I can even do for this as if I ever catch this rat, another will take its place. Calories are on the table here, the environment is going to grow to consume that excess I’ve introduced to the local area.
> Not sure what I can even do for this as if I ever catch this rat, another will take its place.
Just move to Alberta[0].
0: https://www.alberta.ca/albertas-rat-control-program
Here in Seattle my farm feeds raccoons, birds, deer, squirrels, rabbits, mice, rats, and bears. Occasionally the orchards are left with some for us ;)
Time to make friends with your neighborhood owl/cat?
Ancient problems require ancient solutions.
A guy had a cherry tree planted nearby, and after the first few people picked the bottom ~2.5 meters, the rest started pulling and breaking down branches to reach cherries higher up, climbing over the hedge, breaking branches there too, and of course left the branches on the ground for the owner to clear.
He still regrets not planting it further away from the street, unreachable to shitty people.
A lot of it depends where you are. I lived near the downtown core of a large city, and people would (usually gently) pick the fruit off the tree next to the sidewalk. Few would venture onto the property itself, even though there was no fence and an abundance of fruit trees. It was not much of a bother. I currently live near the downtown core of a small city. You could go to bed one night with an abundance of fruit, far from the street, and awake the next day to find nothing.
I think they are awesome but once you have it publicly mapped that one person will make it their biz to harvest for free all they can. The kind who has a house and a car but will go and grab all samplers or free food handouts and the like out of principle. Then locals will no longer benefit
There's a crew like that for apple trees in Glasgow! They rack up boxes and boxes from all around the city. Then they run events where you can press apples, and all the fresh juice gets given away.
If locals don't mind then why not?
I’m guessing the “given away” part is key here.
It doesn't. It's not given away to the same locals, so it's irrelevant. If I strip raid your fruit tree of fruit and give it away to people who knows where, your end result you have no fruit. So "do locals not mind" is an important question. Maybe you personally don't care but some people need to eat.
Though I guess some of you here would say supporting such people with public property is a bad idea. Let's give the fruit to a guy with an online fruit tree map and a car instead.
When I was a child we would go on trips to pick mushrooms and fruit with family. As I grew older more often there was less and less or nothing left to pick in accessible places. Locals know a "secret place" (not really) but then someone puts it up online for internet points and whoosh.
Not a problem for us, we didn't really need them (middle class), it was far enough away of the town that it does not hurt a random hungry person, we could just drive around intil we find another place (was getting more and more difficult already 15 years ago). But not everyone is as lucky
It's true!
Americans would rather see food thrown away than taken by somebody they feel doesn't 'deserve' it.
This is so sad to me, but thankfully, not all of us are like this.
My neighborhood has a small park that features a pear tree and a plethora of frost grapes. My wife and I are of a conservationist bent, so we monitor the plants in the park for any bad news and help keep the trails manicured. I can say that pear tree and grapes are both used wisely and with others in mind, as people from the neighborhood show up to take only what they need. One lady does take a lot, but she makes terrific jams then passes them around.
It's quite a positive culture around this park, and it was in place long before we moved there. It also goes against everything I otherwise tend to experience with my fellow Americans, namely greed and gluttony of consumerism.
That's awesome. Do you have tons of fruit trees around in general? If not, do you think your idyllic situation is possibly because your trees are not listed on a map?
Do you think a person who really needs to eat right now and the only option is picked fruit can also be the person who has access to a website with fruit tree map and a car to get there?
I am not sure why you are asking and the tone of your questioning seems more leading than curious, so I ask you, what is your point?
I am asking because we are on a forum and because I am trying to understand you?
Yep, I certainly would prefer food get thrown away then for somebody to drive up to my property, harvest all of the fruit, and then go and sell it to other people.
However, that's less about deserving it, and more about the food being taken for someone's personal profit.
I also think most people would be happy for the food to go to those in need, but then for make reasons we have laws or business policies that forbid it... Starbucks doesn't want to pay 10 million dollars because an employee gave a homeless person food they we're allergic to... We do love lawsuits here..
Yea, OP's point is that it's not about deserving it, it's that there's always someone who thinks anything available for free means that they can just take the whole lot for themselves, and/or profit from it.
I remember the last company I worked for that tried the whole "Free food if you stay a little late" thing. They'd buy a few boxes of pizzas and set them out int he break room with the expectation that you'd take a slice or two. Well, of course, eventually one or two people started taking entire boxes home for themselves and then that "perk" inevitably ended.
Is this abuse? Were people taking these boxes as soon as they were delivered, or were people taking home boxes of leftovers? I don't think I've ever been to an event of any sort which had ordered pizzas and saw someone just take a box before anyone could get to it. But most events I've been to which had pizzas had intentionally ordered extra boxes, and it's always encouraged for someone to take home extras in those cases.
Price for a box of pizza? Vs price for a hour of overtime?
Yeah this sounds bad. If the company stops giving “free” pizza bc/ someone takes not 1/8 of a pizza but 1 pizza, then you know how much they value, or rather do not value your time.
Hard to see how a manager could be this inept.
Removing the perk was absolutely not about the cost of the pizza which was trivial, or the extra productivity, it was about the few jerks abusing it. Of course, they could have bought 5X more pizza, and then the jerks would have walked out with 5 pizza boxes instead of one.
Same mentality is why we can't leave a basket of unattended candy outside the house on Halloween, for Trick-Or-Treaters to share: Inevitably someone will just take the whole basket. It's not about the cost of the candy, it's about not enabling jerks.
You can think about the company spending too little on pizza or you can think about people being selfish jerks to each other.
When in your local park there are no benches to sit because half of them were dismantled and sold for scrap (true story) you can think how government spends too little on park maintenance or policing, or you can think how people are being selfish jerks to each other.
> then for somebody to drive up to my property, harvest all of the fruit, and then go and sell it to other people.
You just described most AI companies.
https://fallingfruit.org/
I'm from Russia.
By the way if you know how plants grow and spread "get eaten by humans and pooped into sewer" is not always the best reproduction strategy and so throwing away is not always a waste.
And judging that some people don't deserve something is not always wrong unless you are philosophical extremist. If you have so many fruit trees around that anyone in need can pick one any time you probably don't live in an area where a map of fruit trees is useful. It's catch-22 isn't it?
> And judging that some people don't deserve something is not always wrong unless you are philosophical extremist.
You are missing the point - ofcourse those people exist, some people don’t deserve to breathe, think terrible crimes
The problems are:
1 - you are so preoccupied with that 1 guy who ‘does not deserve’ does not get free fruit, that you make life worse for 1,000 people who do
2 - are you the right person to judge who ‘deserves’ and who ‘doesn’t’. Who is the right person to judge? What if they are wrong? Who judges the judges?
I'm not the one judging. You can say it's logic doing the judging. Homeless in the area who have to eat but can afford nothing and local kids, vs the guy with an online fruit tree map and a car and a bunch of time to raid trees. "Deserves" is relative.
Am I misinterpreting your comment, or are you suggesting that GP is being unreasonable for being frustrated with the people they described?
I think he is, it's sarcasm
A fun coincidence - I saw this link right after jumping off the plane from a trip to Hiiumaa and Saaremaa in Estonia. Public apple trees are everywhere. Additionally, people leave some of their apples in boxes for everyone to take for free - some are in front of houses and shop, others on public bus stops etc. Such a lovely tradition.
When I went to high school, I'd walk through an allotment garden to get to school. Always great for a snack on the way home, someone had amazing raspberries! Some lovely cherry trees as well as several varieties of apples.
Public? Free? Pschht, everyone knows that what's outside the fence is free for the taking!
But there were also tons of fruit trees in nature in the city. Went jogging one time at a jogging trail, saw chanterelles in the forest, came back with my t-shirt full of tasty, tasty mushrooms.
If you've grown up with always being able to pick fruits and berries and mushrooms in nature, maps like this are so weird. Why would you need a map? Nature is full of it?
Oh, you're not allowed? Oh, you can't access it? Oh, there aren't any around, really? How sad.
There aren't a lot of public fruit trees in US cities because the falling ripe fruit can create a sanitization issue.
That's more of an inefficient allocation issue. Mostly people driving past ripe fruit trees to buy fruit imported across oceans at the grocery store.
Theres a ton of fig and dates in socal people don’t pick. That being said its hard to pick these trees. They might be located in clumsy areas like by some razor wire in a parking lot. You aren’t sure when its time to harvest unless you know this tree well. Harvesting might not even be practical considering the best fruit is picked not dropped and picked up, and these trees could be huge. Then of course these being unsprayed trees the fruit is going to be full of wasp larvae at least for the figs. Then the rats will eat most of whatever is there thats worth eating anyhow before you realize its there.
Commercially its a different story. Trees are planted and pruned to maintain easy harvesting. They are sprayed and rodents managed, as well as being overall outproduced by the yield on the farm. Fruit trees are a lot of work. Even literal money growing on trees would be work, against what the saying might imply.
Spain has plenty of oranges growing in the middle of a public street, most of them are perfectly edible. If fruit trees are a common presence in the city, people learn when to pick what, it becomes common knowledge, it’s not rocket science.
> You aren’t sure when it is time to harvest unless you know this tree well.
This is a big issue. Every bush and tree I've added to my yard is a learning experience about what "ripe" means and when to harvest. The bright red plums are enticing to the eye but bitter and chalky. Perfect blue blueberries that taste like lemons.
As a previous owner of a fig tree, figs are also kind of the worst case. Crazy hard keeping those suckers harvestable, compared to citrus et al.
Would you prefer fruit that grew near a city road, after many decades of cars passing by that place while burning leaded fuel?
Considering that orchards had lead arsenate sprayed on them it might actually be better
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362028X2...
But you can't be sure the imported fruit wasn't grown in the same or worse conditions
Out of sight, out of mind.
Food arrives at the grocery store: perfectly checked, standardized, quality controlled, and ready to consume. /s
> perfectly checked, standardized, quality controlled, and ready to consume
Only if there is a problem. /s
Unattended apple trees can create rotting apples on the ground, certainly. Those are admittedly not pretty, but in Central Russia (and, presumably, in Estonia, which is not that far off climate- and fauna-wise) they’re just one more layer of soil by spring. Do hotter temperatures or different wildlife make them a bigger problem in the US somehow?
Here in Antwerp there's a long street (the Markgravelei) lined with cornelian cherries (Cornus mas).
I think most people around here don't know that they're edible and anyway that fruit is somewhat of a hassle to pick and prepare, but anyway once they're ripe they fall on the sidewalk and on cars, staining everything red, making the sidewalks slippery and leaving seeds behind. And there's no wild life to speak of, maybe some rats but not many, and birds don't seem to eat the fallen fruit. Wasps do, but it's not a positive point.
There's no soil (except a ~1m² square around each tree) because it's just a street in the city so although I don't find them a bother and I can pick a fruit from time to time while walking, I can well understand why people who live in this street would complain about it.
I can't understand what went through the mind of people who chose to plant these trees here. I think it's almost as bad as if those were mulberry trees (relative to staining power).
But it's just a remark on how fruit trees can be annoying to some people, for my part I used to live in another city where I was able to pick blackberries and raspberries on my way to work or to the supermarket, sometimes pears, and it was great. And in autumn I pick chestnuts here. Not too often because of PFAS pollution.
There is a mulberry tree right next to a bus station where I live. Between the people waiting for the bus and birds I almost never manage to eat the fruit and there is none on the ground.
mulberries are also incredibly fragile, they disintegrate into little packets of effectively dark dye very quickly
Probably a situation with stuck up neighbors most of the time. If you’ve heard of the homeowners association problem in the USA, this could be the cause. Having rotting fruit is fine for the soil and everything, but the stick up the butt neighbors or HOA probably would complain or ban the practice. US Americans are pretty separated from nature in their big suburbs.
I don't get it. If I wanted somebody to tell me what choices to make with how I lived, I'd have just continued living with my parents.
HOA's can actually work really well, they just seemed to have taken a horrible turn somewhere in the USA. "HOA"s in South Africa are called "Sectional Titles", and they're pretty reasonable. They allow for (if you ask me) more efficient use of common resources (garden services, security, etc). Do they have politics, drama and the occasional Karen? Of course, but every grouping of individuals has that as it's just human nature.
I'd be ok with something like that, but I think I'd need neighbors who were interested in having common resources in the first place.
Where we've got it wrong is that only thing we have in common is a shared interest in how the market perceives us, and since markets are batshit crazy, we end up doing crazy things like maintaining a lawn in a drought just for the aesthetics of it. If there were actually something we had in common, like I dunno a lathe or something, there would be something with practical considerations around which to anchor HOA policy.
(bias note: I don't live in an HOA, but my friends seem to hate it an I'm offended by the lack of character/sense in the HOA-governed neighborhoods that surround mine.)
Indeed. But it is difficult to find a house near work that is not already part of an HOA.
Easy just live in a neighborhood built before 1970. Odds are if you work in a city these are available in spades in a reasonable distance to work. Nicer homes and neighborhoods than the newer plastic siding stuff thats come since too.
maybe we need a map
It depends on the state. Some seem to love them (coughFloridacough) and others dislike them.
Afaik, most of them are vestigial instruments left over from master planned development financing, that gave the developers X years of voting control in order to recoup some part of their investment.
> If you’ve heard of the homeowners association problem in the USA
From what I heard, their level of tyranny would give most dictators a worthy challenge.
hornets
> Do hotter temperatures or different wildlife make them a bigger problem in the US somehow?
In many places, people worry about bugs and rats eating them, and the ones that don't get eaten start to rot and grow moldy. Generally just things people don't like in a dense city.
Any rotting fruit that falls on the ground will attract many animals and bugs. Lots of flies and wasps, as well as bigger animals like rats or raccoons. Depends on the city for the specific animal, but seems like there are plenty of animals in big cities (at least here in the US) - NYC famously has rats, for example.
Rotting fruit also quickly attract bees and wasps and larger problems like raccoons.
It is more likely to be seen as messy, just aesthetics. Another big reason for chopping down fruit trees in urban areas is they mess up cars that are parked under them.
People shall not park if they don't like it.
There's a spot in St. Paul, MN that I drive by sometimes that has had treefall apples all over the sidewalk for the last few weeks. I'm surprised they're left on the tree for that long, since it's in a pretty busy area.
Might have a lot of worms and be poor eating for the casual picker
Yeah, I guess. People are spoiled by the appearance of grocery store produce. We have a bunch of apple trees that produce delicious fruit. I just eat around the worms and bug-bitten spots.
Not sure if it is really sanitization issue. But certainly perceived one - it can be mess. This was not unique to US. I remember on the other side of the Iron Curtain we planted in cities mostly just male dioecious trees.
Finally no fruit ...just pollen everywhere. (Good luck with allergies)
> because the falling ripe fruit can create a sanitization issue
I presume that Americans always take the poo of their beloved pets from the streets. /s
> "I presume that Americans always take the poo of their beloved pets from the streets."
They're supposed to by law (and just good old-fashioned manners), and many do clean up after their pets, but anywhere you go there's always gotta be at least one jerkwad that doesn't care one little bit about anything beyond the tip of their own nose.
They do, more than most countries.
I hope you got to enjoy some of those apples during your trip!
https://fallingfruit.org/
Also they have a freegan section of reported foods being thrown away.
https://fallingfruit.org/?c=forager%2Cfreegan&locale=en
It is a shame they we throw away so much food.
https://fruktkartan.se/ for Sweden.
https://www.fruitmap.org/
Yeah this seems to be more popular, at least in England.
I live in the Netherlands but come from South of France. First thing I did when buying a house was to create a "aromatic garden" in front of my house. Oregano, thyme, lavender, ....
No only the smell is amazing in the summer and it reminds me of home, but it's been so cool to see people come and pluck from it for their cooking. It's been my hope all along.
I love this <3
I'm glad to see several fig trees in Crete on the map. Just the other day I was thinking it would be cool to have an app mapping them.
Fig trees located in fields are considered public by tradition in Crete. I.e. it's fair game to stop by and grab some fruit, even if you cross into private property. This tradition originates from older days, where farmers/shepherds were travelling the island on foot or riding donkeys, often sleeping away from home. Fig trees were established as the unofficial roadside snack bars because of the delicious fruit, but more importantly because they thrive on the rough terrain without need for human care.
This feels like it might have unintended consequences. My mom lives in a neighborhood where lots of people have fruit trees and allow neighbors to take some because none of them could eat all of the fruit. But, once in while, some people outside the community drive in an clear out the trees abusing the system. Will a map of public trees increase incidents like that?
Noted also in comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41689953 .
We're dismissive of "security through obscurity", but cost functions and diffusive compartmentalization are structural components of many systems. Yet exploring innovative approaches to mitigate the costs of our barrier reductions don't seem to get much discussion.
This has happened for free RV camping spots. After the internet occupied the space, you can't find a peaceful area to camp anymore. In fact many places in AZ closed due to people just dumping their black tanks straight up on the land.
I have an alley of cherry trees nearby. It's really nice and there is plenty for everyone. Theoretically. But every year a bunch of "professionals" appear and collect everything. Probably to sell them somewhere. If that weren't enough, they do a lot of damage to the trees. It's just sad.
Maybe keeping the map more localized
Around me I see some people that are very dedicated to exploiting these fruits. They’ll show up with a large group - children, friends, family - and systematically pick everything clean to fill their buckets. It’s really disappointing because they clearly don’t need that much, there’s nothing left for others, and there’s nothing left for wildlife. The worst thing is they usually don’t pay any attention to whether the fruit is ready to be harvested or not - they just grab it all - and that means they’re not likely to get something tasty even for themselves. But there is a mindset to get them before anyone else does, so they take them anyways. Personally I think it is better if these aren’t mapped out, so at least locals who are invested in their community have a chance to pick them responsibly. These maps end up just being used by the exploitative people.
And unfortunately the website has several entries that are in nature reserves where picking is absolutely not allowed. I mailed the owner of the website to let them know.
Do you have examples of nature reserves where this is not allowed. Here there are always rules and they vary alot between the reserves, but mostly you are allowed to pick fruits. Digging, breaking sticks and collecting rocks is forbidden almost everywhere.
I ask because this would be an interesting data to have in Openstreetmap or Wikidata, so you can easily know what rules govern what nature reserve.
I reckon the main thing is to use this free resource, someone valuing it is a good thing. If there's not enough for you or someone else, the right solution is to just plant more.
I am always on the lookout for mullberries.
I really like them and you can't just buy them at a grocery store.
Mulberries are such a treat!
Growing up we had a mullberry tree. So much purple bird poop.
Here's a detailed one for Toronto,
http://www.mapto.ca/maps/the-fruit-trees-of-toronto
Someone brought this up in a child comment: what are the taste/health effects of near-permanent car traffic on fruit trees? The fruit of the public citrus trees in my city is pretty sour, but I don't know how much this is because of not being bred for sweetness, vs absorbing carbon monoxide, lead etc from passing cars.
If it's anywhere in southern Spain the oranges are decorative/bitter jam oranges, not for eating directly.
Def fruit grown near heavy traffic can be affected by pollution yet the extent of these effects depends on different factors
If you're interested in this kind of thing, inaturalist is another great resource with significantly more activity (at least in the US)
A similar project to http://map.na-ovoce.cz
Oregon is plastered with fruit trees just growing anywhere in public spaces. Most of the time wild trees aren't cared for enough to be useful but there are some exceptions, especially plums.
My best spots are fruits trees in the border of a villa, but you can catch some by climbing a bit. Usually proprietaries are ok, they don't eat them most of time. I'm foraging figs and persimons
Edmonton, Canada: https://data.edmonton.ca/Environmental-Services/Trees-Map/ud...
The city also has some foraging clubs that are quite active. There are many more things to pick in the city's forests and parks: asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, currants, mushrooms, etc.
I have a fruit tree that provides a LOT of fruit. Half of it hangs over a fence. I don't mind if people come up and take some of the "low hanging fruit". However the other day I caught a lady halfway across the top of my fence, her torso was in my yard. This is a 6 foot tall fence. The problem is that if you give an inch, people take a mile.
Does this use OSM? Does anyone understand how to integrate your own data with OSM (like this project does) without having to actually add it to OSM?
Leaflet lets you add POIs on a OSM base layer map, you can also extract information from OSM about trees and bushes. If you use dumped data from OSM your data will be considered opendata as well so merging them will mean that you can not prevent other people from using you data.
In short: You do a overpass turbo query to dump data from OSM and import it into sqlite, build a GIS index, serve it as geojson, display that on a slippymap with leafletjs and write an end point to update the data.
Thank you.
https://leafletjs.com/
This reminds me of the Stanford Gleaning Project
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=15Z25z2IyTYSzH0...
Cool map. But in Copenhagen there are so many toxic lots that I would never take fruit from any tree within the city limits.
That’s interesting. Leftover from industrial era? Any specific contaminants that you would expect to find in the city soil?
What do you mean by toxic?
Not Copenhagen, but if you are in the Seattle area you should think twice before gardening or eating fruit from free growing plants if you are south of Elliot Bay on the Puget Sound.
https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/dirtalert/?lat=47.273840&lon=-12...
I've been thinking something like this is needed whenever I see a tree dropping fruit on the sidewalk.
I knew someone that had a date tree in the far front corner of their yard. when it produced fruit a car would park there and like 4-5 people were picking all the fruit off the tree. they ended up cutting it down.
Just be prepared for someone to pick everything to sell or for their restaurant
Dates grow on palms that are quite tall. Were they climbing these people’s palm tree?
They brought a ladder
Mundraub btw. is a German legal term that literally translates as mouth-robbery.
It was a legal term.
For non-Germans: it's a (now colloquial) term for stealing in low quantities and out of direct necessity for your own/your family's survival. In that it alleviates the "base motives" part of the crime.
It's colloquially used in a sense that suggests it's legal or a legal gray area but it's also important to point out that there's no such exemption. "Mundraub" is simply minor theft (like shoplifting low-value products) which means you won't be prosecuted unless the injured party presses charges.
"Stealing" fruit (or flowers) from public flora is legal in a practical sense and under certain circumstances explicitly permitted if it does not involve trespass, you only take small quantities (which is not legally defined) and you do so carefully (which is also not legally defined). There's no requirement for immediately consuming the fruits on the spot (as the colloquial use of the term "Mundraub" suggests).
As with most of the things laypeople think of as being legal, it's more of a case of how much someone cares to enforce the law that makes it illegal. Also note that "public land" may not actually be public despite being publicly accessible. A lot of former nobility retained their land despite losing their titles and it's not always clear that this land is actually privately owned, especially if you're not from the area. Some is even tended by municipal governments as part of contractual agreements for allowing access to the public. Germany did not get rid of its nobility like e.g. France did even if we officially no longer recognize titles.
Ah - kind of like scrumping in British English.
Very cool and we have similar in Sweden. Have used it several times https://fruktkartan.se/#/
If I had a fruit tree in my front yard, I wouldn't care if someone takes the fruit. Most people don't eat all the fruit in a season anyways.
I covered some of this in a recent blogpost:
[1] https://taylor.town/oh-theft
tl;dr Remember that private plants overhanging public property are not necessarily fair game.
Hey i read some of that blogpost and I’m struggling to see your issue. I’m happy to agree it’s theft, but why should I mind it in cases where it’s a large corporation like home depot? Certainly I agree with your concern for personal gardens.
My blog post was moreso trying to explain what's legal vs what's right/wrong :)
If you're asking for my personal moral opinion, I think it's only a minor sin.
To me, it's like walking your dog without a leash. Of course your precious chihuahua doesn't need a leash, but then that somehow gives license for pomeranians, pugs, corgis, collies, terriers, pitbulls, german shephards, mastiffs, etc.
I don't think chihuahuas really need leashes. But sometimes I also don't trust people to decode nuance and to self-police. I want to live in a world where chihahuas are free and safe, and it seems like the best way to achieve that is through adherence to blanket policies. I'm still unsure if that makes it a moral issue though haha I'm not a philosopher
which mapping style do they use? Reminds me of the German maps of my childhood. We have nice forest service maps but the styling isn't as pretty
People will use this to systematically harvest what they can and sell it or its byproducts. Tragedy of the commons, etc.
Commercial orchards are full of carefully pruned and closely spaced trees of known varieties and the margin is still not great on fruit production. It simply isn't a good way to make money to drive all around town picking unknown variety fruits with pest blemishes from irregular trees and then try to sell them. This is why maps like Falling Fruit have been around for years and yet if you walk around Berkeley (for example) you will still see plenty of fruit on trees.
better systematically harvested and sold than fallen to the ground and rotted
Even better when done without profit as a motive, like community volunteer efforts such as https://www.portlandfruit.org/
that's better if it works better, but often profit is what works better as a motive. ultimately what matters is that the fruit finds its way to hungry mouths—and that those mouths are human mouths and not rat mouths!
systematic harvesting is much better at that; whatever kind of point-scoring exercise people engage in on the way is irrelevant
Animals will eat those or the composting of the food simply returns nutrients to the environment
i don't want the rats in my neighborhood to return those nutrients to the environment, and i don't like tracking composting fruit into my apartment, though i guess if parrots eat the fruits while they're still on the tree that's okay
Yeah in my experience most people don't like giving up the location of public apple trees etc. so they can harvest them themselves anyway.
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when german people get free fruit: yes, that is well and good, the way the world is meant to be.
when non-german people get free fruit: aaaargh the immigrants are eating all the fruit! no respect for social norms! poachers! thieves!
Actually yes. Ingroup preference is a good thing.
I love this new right-wing "intellectualism". They just declare "actually, racism is good" and then derive everything else from there
Nothing racist about preferring your ingroup. The arabs have a really good saying when it comes to this: Me against my brother. Me and my brother against my cousin. Me and my cousin against the world.
Why so?
Why is it a good thing?
Because it lets them feel good about themselves.
How do you teach such norms, on small things like shared fruit trees, to adults? Which entrepreneurialisms to encourage and which to stop.
That is incredible difficult and basically boils down to resocialising people in another culture.
In the case of refugees we are facing the additional problem, that some originate from areas that are long time disfunctional, resulting in humans that never before have been socialized in a working society.
I believe that an important factor is to mix newcomers and locals, unfortunately that goes against the desire of both the government and the immigrants. Both want to centralize for efficiency resons.
Not many places in the US.
minor complaint: every single interaction with the map results in a new item pushed into the browser history
which makes pressing the back key multiple times take you on a fun adventure in reverse!
I don't, generally, have the emotion of hate. I believe that hate is just a waste of emotional energy, and doesn't really serve a purpose. Further, I believe that if most people would stop and think, they would see that their hate is only serving to damage themselves, with zero positive results in every case.
And yet, I absolutely hate sites that don't let me go back to wherever I was before going to the site when I hit back, but instead reload prior same page clicks.
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Rookies
Rule 1: be nice
That’s fair. I don’t want to marginally increase the level of toxicity.
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Ok.