Last summer I visited the island of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts, to see some of the many historic sites there. One of the highlights was a 200-year-old mulberry tree, with huge spreading limbs, luxurious with leaves and fruit.

So it was doubly sad when I arrived for my weekly volunteer shift at Villa Therese Clinic a few weeks ago to find workmen cutting down the big healthy mulberry in front of the clinic. It shaded the lawn where children played, the patients waiting for rides after their appointments, the cars parked in front of the clinic.

The workmen said they were cutting it sown to make room for the new building the archdiocese is planning, which Monsignor Jerome had told us would not be built for at least another year. In this time of global ecological crisis, when every carbon dioxide absorbing, oxygen producing tree is helping to avert disaster, the untimely destruction of the mulberry seems thoughtless and irresponsible. Someone counted the rings and wrote "67 years old" on the stump. It was probably planted soon after the clinic was built 70 years ago.

Santa Fe has some lovely old trees, as I learned on a Santa Fe Botanical Garden tour led by arborist Rich Atkinson a few years ago. Their numbers are diminishing. The pi & ntilde;on that soared over the Sena Plaza, for instance, is gone now.

How about an ordinance or program to protect some of these magnificent and venerable treasures? Even though the City Council can override the decisions of the Historic Design Review Board, as it did in the case of the Villa These Clinic building itself, the board does try to preserve the architectural history of Santa Fe. Perhaps the Botanical Garden could recognize by plaques or markers the oldest and loveliest trees in our historic city.

Mary Ray Cate lives in Santa Fe.