Silly idea...

Thinking about fruit trees, how long they live, etc, it occurred to me that if subsequent generations don't plant replacements, a tree could provide fruit for 100 years,but the winning streak would still break....
Unless
On my death bed, I curse my family! I will comeback and haunt their asses if they don't plant one tree a year in my honor!
100 years later, I will return, and there better be 100 flipped trees,or else
Better plant extras:BOO!

Yep, I'm knuts,but just think if planting trees was a religious/superstitious imperative....

In John Michael Greer's novel Star's Reach (set a few hundred years after the end of the industrial / fossil fuel era) there is a religious / cultural taboo on cutting trees and an obligation to plant many replacements for each one reluctantly harvested.

As a next-generational farmer I can assure some that there is no need to be overly concerned about the regeneration of trees, it is automatically done in nature.

Back in the mid-1800's, a common fad here in New England was in the grafting of trees, mostly apple trees, but others as well. One reason I have never really posted much on orchards is simply because the trees we gather apples from have been here since those times. Many are 18 inches in diameter or more, and while they are not as convenient to pick from as the dwarf trees of today, I use what I got. Some are sour, some are sweet, some are yellow, and some red; and while no one really has a clue what variety they are, I know you can't kill them. In a few area I have dug up old orchards and inevitably they come back through shoots.

I have a lot of history regarding what happened and where on this farm, but sadly fruit trees were not really recorded. They were messing around with them I suppose, not sure which ones would work out or not, and definitely not knowing some 170 years later they would still be growing.

The owner of Johnny's Selected Seeds I guess is a huge apple variety investigator, and I tried to have him out once to identify a few of these odd-ball varieties, but sadly he was going through cancer at the time and could not do it.

One of my grandparents had a Johnny Appleseed tree on their farm. It was huge, incredibly old, and made a sort of crab apple a bit bigger than golfballs. They were yellowish with a red blush. Some buildings on the farm had been built near but left it be, we would crawl on the 'garage' roof to pick all of them we wanted. They made the best applebutter on the planet. It isn't there any more, the tree or the farmstead. Else I would have gone to get some of it and propagate a few more.

We can hope, about future generations replanting. At six I started seeds out of a red delicious apple. Some of the trees made it and were planted many places. Those trees give a small crab that is bitter, bright reddish and do make good jelly. Small long oval crab... I've made many trees since. I have left something of a legacy after all...