AN UNUSUAL cherry plum tree at Hutton Rudby, described as a treasure by one expert, has a butt-rotting fungus and is not worthy of special protection, Hambleton Council has declared.

The 200-year-old tree has been in blossom over recent weeks and Rudby Parish Council wanted to put it under a protection order.

However, Hambleton Council said the tree was "over-mature, wind-stressed and showing signs of a butt-rotting fungus."

It grows in a field owned by the Honeyman family and was brought to the parish council's attention by a local botanist.

Then a second expert, Ernest Oddy, of the Northern Fruit Group at Harlow Carr Gardens in Harrogate, travelled to see it and described it as a grand old specimen.

Speaking at this month's parish meeting, chairman Coun John Richardson said: "Hambleton Council recognises the tree gives a pleasant visual amenity, but it says a protection order would be inappropriate. It reports there is disease which will cause the tree's demise in due course."

Councillors appeared unimpressed with the official response and some two suggested the elderly plum tree would long outlive the officers.

Mr Oddy thought the tree was still healthy and vigorous. He believed it was probably planted as an ornamental tree for jams. The variety was originally Eastern and more common to southern England.