For years, conservationists have been working to bring native trees back to the spectacular Glen Rosa on the Isle of Arran.
But a decade of effort was wiped out in days when a wildfire ripped across the valley earlier this month.
“It was years of our work going up in flames,” Kate Sampson, the National Trust for Scotland’s senior ranger on Arran, told BBC Scotland News.
That’s devastating. I hadn’t heard of the Arran whitebeam before, I’ll have to look out for it when on Arran next.
Arran whitebeam is one of the rarest and most endangered trees in the world. It is a hybrid of rowan and rock whitebeam which has stayed on the Isle of Arran since the last glaciers were formed.