A tree has great significance to somebody, and causes sadness when it is damaged or destroyed, or dies naturally.
Trees are often considered as symbols of immortality and longevity, as they live a long time, and some types can live for many hundreds of years. However, they can be damaged by high winds, fungus spores, forest fires, lightning, or being vandalised or cut down, especially if trees are cleared for development of buildings.
Somebody might be attached to a tree because it has been there all their lives, or a significant event happened near the tree.
In Real Life, there is the practice of upholding what is referred to as "tree law". "Tree law" is a set of laws that try to dictate who is liable for not only damages caused by trees but damages caused to trees. In a more simplified case, if Person A's branches damaged Person B's car when they fell, then Person A would be liable for the damages; however, if Person B cut down Person A's tree without his permission, then Person B would be liable.
Someone who destroys a Tragic Tree is often a greedy person who only wants it for its lumber and does not know or care about the significance of the tree. If it is a religious or sacred symbol, a meeting place, a historical site, a home for animals, has stood for hundreds of years, or is just special to a particular person, none of that matters as long as it's a tree and it can be chopped down.
Sometimes, even after the tree is cut down, the person or people plant a new tree from its fruit, seeds, or another part of it, to represent a Hope Spot that even though the original tree is gone, it will live on in another form.
The trope can be discussed if somebody considers destroying a tree but decides not to, or if the consequences of destroying a tree are mentioned. Can overlap with Soulful Plant Story, and World Tree. Compare Symbolically Broken Object.
Examples:
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Advertising
- In the Smokey Bear PSA Oxygen Mask
, a grandfather is telling his young granddaughter about how there were trees everywhere when he was young, but careless people allowed them to burn in forest fires, and everything started dying because there was no oxygen. The camera pans out to reveal that they are wearing gas masks and standing in the middle of a barren wasteland, with nothing but grey rocks as far as the eyes can see.
Granddaughter: Grandpa, I wish I could bring back the trees for you.
Anime and Manga
- HeartCatch Pretty Cure!: The main goal of the heroines of this story is the restoration of the Great Heart Tree, weakened by the Dark Precure's attack on it. Near the end of the series, Dune uses his restored power to destroy the tree, turning the Earth into a desert and trapping the people in Crystal save the Cures and the various victims of the Desertarians. Once Dune is finally defeated, the Heart Seeds the heroines gathered are used to grow a new Great Heart Tree.
- One Piece: During the Enies Lobby arc, a flashback takes place which reveals Nico Robin's backstory. She was born and raised on Ohara Island which was home to a massive tree called the Tree of Knowledge which the archeologists who lived on the island used as both a hub and library. Unfortunately the Tree of Knowledge was destroyed when the World Government ordered that a Buster Call be used to destroy Ohara Island.
- Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire: The early episode "Tree's a Crowd" centers around a giant dying tree that used to be home to a lounge of Treecko in the forest. Most of the Treecko have moved on except for a stubborn one who wants to keep the tree alive. After stopping Team Rocket's attempts to capture all the Treecko, the lounge all try their hardest to revive the giant tree but it still dies in the end. The one stubborn Treecko, feeling relieved of his burden, challenges Ash to a fight, leading to his capture.
- In The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World, Togo's adoptive family planted an olive tree shortly after he was adopted. His adoptive father, Daigo, says it symbolizes his bond with them and that it will lay roots and grow just as Togo will slowly become a part his new family. But it withers after Togo's adoptive brother Kiyohiro succumbs to his latent envy toward him and approaches the Relationship Enders to become Bondkiller, showing how that bond has been broken.
- Tenchi Muyo!:
- Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki: When Tenchi and the others race to save Ryoko from Kagato, Ryo-Ohki lifts up and connects with Ryu-Oh's core unit, which also contains Ayeka's Juraian tree of the same name. When the core unit is destroyed, the tree is ruined and drifting in space. Some time after the fight, Tenchi discovers a seed Tsunami gave him so that Ayeka could regrow Ryu-Oh with the help of a core unit Washu saved.
- Tenchi Forever: In this continuity, Yosho traveled to Earth with his lover Haruka, but she passed away soon after, her soul residing in Yosho's tree. When Tenchi is trapped in there, Ryoko goes in to save him while Yosho, now Katsuhito, is forced to cut the tree down to get them out and put Haruka’s spirit to rest.
Comic Books
- Star Wars: Shattered Empire: The fourth issue centers around Luke Skywalker attempting to recover the two last fragments of the Jedi Temple's Great Tree, which was destroyed by Darth Sidious after he turned the Temple into the Imperial Palace. In the end, Luke ends up taking one, and Shara Bey takes another to Yavin 4 to be planted.
Fan Works
- Past Sins: The Road Home is this fanfic adapting the loss of the Golden Oak library tree into its timeline and involves Twilight trying to eventually tell Nyx and Spike about how their house / tree was lost.
Film — Animated
- Disney Fairies: The Pixie Dust Tree that makes the dust that lets the fairies fly and practice their talents is destroyed during the battle with Kyto the dragon in the original novels. There’s fear over what it means for the fairies but they discover that they can harvest dust from the feathers of Mother Dove.
- The Lorax (2012): When the Onceler cuts down a single Truffula tree, the Lorax and the forest critters mourn its loss. Things only get worse from there, as the Onceler gets greedy and cuts down all the Truffula trees to make his Thneeds, turning the forest into a desolate wasteland and polluting the air. Only when the last tree falls does the Onceler finally begin to regret his actions.
Film — Live-Action
- Avatar: The climax begins with the RDA, at Quaritch's instruction, attacking and destroying the Na'vi Hometree, their sacred link to their goddess Eywa, dealing them a huge psychological blow.
- Back to the Future 1: Shortly after arriving in 1955, Marty accidentally runs over one of Old Man Peabody's two pine trees that the Twin Pines Mall in 1985 is named after, showing how Marty's presence in 1955 is already altering history. When he's back in 1985, we see that the mall is now called "Lone Pine Mall" instead.
- Bridge to Terabithia: The adaptation makes it clear that the tree that the rope swing was on, and the one that eventually becomes the titular bridge, were one and the same, meaning that the tree that broke when Leslie swung on it during the flood, resulting in her death, is now this.
- In It's a Wonderful Life, a drunken George drives his car into a tree, causing a man to yell at him for damaging an old tree that was planted by his great-grandfather.
- X-Men: Apocalypse: Subverted when a young Scott Summers, still struggling with Power Incontinence, destroys Charles Xavier’s favourite tree. Far from being upset, Professor X is impressed by Scott’s gifts and enrols him on the spot.
Literature
- In The Giving Tree, the titular tree gives up parts of itself to its All Take and No Give human companion until it is nothing more than a stump. This has been interpreted in multiple ways, including as an allegory for the relationship between child and parent or an allegory for the relationship between humans and nature.
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Downplayed, in that Harry and Ron crash the flying car into the Whomping Willow, which is a violent tree which fights back by thrashing with its branches. One reason of many why Harry and Ron are in massive trouble for arriving in the flying car is the damage they caused to this valuable tree.
- King Oak Of Sevenoaks: In this story based on the Great Storm in England in 1987, the seven oaks (named Sorrow, Music, Sport, Invention, Love and Creation, Joy and Peace, and King Oak) which overlook the town of Sevenoaks fear that they may be damaged by the wind, and to keep their spirits up, they tell stories about what they have seen in their time, relating to their names. However, in the wind, the trees are uprooted one by one, except King Oak, who weeps for his fallen companions. Later, seven new saplings are planted, but they are vandalised. Seven more saplings are then planted, with iron fences around them to protect them.
- The Magician's Nephew: When Digory plants the core of the Apple of Life which he had brought from Narnia, it grows into a tree. Many years later, when Digory is an older man, the tree is blown down in a storm. He cannot bear to have it simply chopped up for firewood, so he has it made into a wardrobe, which becomes the titular wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
- The Marvelous Land of Oz: Discussed, when the Tin Woodman cuts down palm leaves to serve as wings for the Gump, so they can fly away from the Emerald City. The Scarecrow tells him that the penalty for damaging the royal palm tree is to be killed seven times, then imprisoned for life.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: In The Sea of Monsters, Chiron is framed for poisoning the pine tree created from Thalia's spirit, which protects Camp Half-Blood. It will die within a few weeks and leave the camp vulnerable to being destroyed by monsters unless the Golden Fleece is found to heal it. Luke did it, in order to trick someone into getting the Golden Fleece for him so he could steal it and use it to revive Kronos. Thanks to Percy and his friends, the Fleece is retrieved, Luke doesn't get it, and it heals the tree. But its healing magic turns out to be so strong, a fully revived Thalia pops out of it.
- Silverwing: Near the beginning of the story, the nursery colony of Tree Haven is burned down by the owls in retaliation for the main protagonist Shade watching the sun rise in the sky which the bats are forbidden to do.
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- A variation occurs with Daenerys' childhood home, which had a red door and a lemon tree outside the window. Her and Viserys' caretaker Ser Willem Darry died when they were young children, and after that, the servants stole what little money was left and kicked them out of the house. While the tree wasn't chopped down, it is a strong presence in Daenerys' memories and she misses it dearly. In A Clash of Kings, when seeing visions in the House of the Undying, one is her memory of the house and the tree.
I know this room, she thought. She remembered those great wooden beams and the carved animal faces that adorned them. And there outside the window, a lemon tree! The sight of it made her heart ache with longing.
- During the Andal invasion of Westeros, weirwood trees, which were sacred to the Children of the Forest and the First Men, were burned. A Dance of Dragons reveals that weirwoods have a kind of sentience and remember everything they have ever seen over the course of hundreds or even thousands of years, which is knowledge that can only be accessed by a greenseer.
- A variation occurs with Daenerys' childhood home, which had a red door and a lemon tree outside the window. Her and Viserys' caretaker Ser Willem Darry died when they were young children, and after that, the servants stole what little money was left and kicked them out of the house. While the tree wasn't chopped down, it is a strong presence in Daenerys' memories and she misses it dearly. In A Clash of Kings, when seeing visions in the House of the Undying, one is her memory of the house and the tree.
- In the picture book Tess's Tree, a little girl named Tess has an old tree outside her bedroom window, with the names "Tyler and Max" carved in a heart on the trunk. When the tree is damaged in a storm, Tess's mom has it cut down for safety reasons. Tess is very sad, and holds a funeral for her tree that the whole neighborhood comes to. A husband and wife come, and reveal that they are the same Tyler and Max who carved their names into the tree. An old woman explains that the tree was special to her as well, and gives Tess an old photo of herself sitting in its branches as a little girl.
- Tolkien's Legendarium:
- The Lord of the Rings:
- Fangorn Forest is used as fuel for the war machines of Isengard, and when an entire chunk of the Forest, burned and desecrated, is discovered by the Ents, who shepherd the trees and know them as friends, it enrages them enough to emerge from their isolation and sack Isengard.
- When the Hobbits finally get home to the Shire at the end of their journey, they find that Saruman has set himself up as a petty tyrant and begun despoiling the place, including cutting down the well-loved tree in the center of the Party Field. The sight makes Sam burst into tears.
- The Silmarillion: The Numenorean capital city had Nimloth, a great white tree planted in King's Court, but when Sauron seduced the nobility of the island to a religion of Human Sacrifice, he fueled the first sacrificial pyre by chopping up the tree's wood in order to burn alive those who opposed his influence. The White Tree of Gondor would grow from a seed taken by Isildur the night before the ceremony and taken to Middle Earth, but it was then destroyed generations later in the Great Plague.
- The Lord of the Rings:
- Toms Midnight Garden: When Tom travels back in time to the garden, he and Hatty carve their initials into the tree which they have named Tricksy, because it is difficult to climb. The trope is inverted: in the present day, after the garden has been sold and destroyed, the tree remains, and is in the much smaller garden of a modern house.
- The Virgin Suicides: The decline of the Lisbon family is paralleled by the slow death of a tree in front of their house, which becomes infested with an invasive bug but which the Lisbon sisters insisted on trying to save, supposedly because it was beloved by their late sister Cecilia. The tree ends up dying anyway, and the sister soon follows.
- Warrior Cats: Fourtrees is a sacred place to the Clans, a cluster of four great oaks where they meet in peace every month. In Dawn, the Twolegs who are destroying the forest chop it down for lumber. The cats can only watch in silent horror, with even StarClan being unable to stop them. But even though it is gone, the field guide Secrets of the Clans reveals that a spirit copy of Fourtrees exists in StarClan.
The four giant oaks that had once guarded the Great Rock had completely disappeared; even their stumps had been torn from the ground. Their trunks lay in pieces, neatly sliced by giant claws. Squirrelpaw could smell the bitter sap that seeped like blood from each mutilated piece of wood.
- The Wheel of Time:
- Davram Bashere tells a story about a general he served under who forced his legion to bury a stand of trees that he had ordered cut down in a fit of pique. "Do you know how long it takes to dig graves for 21 oak trees? I do." The point of the story is that the man was clearly insane, but his followed him because he won battles.
- Avendoraldera was the only sapling of the sacred Tree of Life, gifted by the Aiel Proud Warrior Race to the nation of Cairhien to honor an ancient debt and symbolize a truce between their peoples. This worked quite well for both nations for 400 years, until King Laman of Cairhien had Avendoraldera cut down to build a fancy new throne. The Aiel launched the most devastating war in centuries solely to take Laman's head for the betrayal.
- The Tree of Life itself turns out to grow in the secret Holy City where the protagonist undertakes one trial to prove himself The Chosen One. He accidentally sets it on fire in a Wizard Duel immediately after; it survives, but stands as a reminder of the harm he's destined to inflict in the course of saving the world.
- Wintergirls: Lia's parents are divorced, she lives with her father and stepmother, and her mother Chloe now lives alone in the family house. Though her career as a heart surgeon is doing fine, it's implied she's not doing so great mentally or emotionally. Her garden is dead and covered in weeds, and the maple tree that used to hold Lia's childhood treehouse has been reduced to a decaying stump.
Live-Action TV
- Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: One episode had a new character move to Colorado Springs and decide to build a house on a plot of land that held a large oak tree that was a popular place for town gatherings. Despite nearly everyone in town trying to talk him out of cutting down the tree, this only made him more determined to do so. The episode ended with him cutting into the tree with an axe.
- Ghosts (US): The episode "The Tree" revolves around a tree being removed from the Woodstone property. Sasappis protests because, according to him, the markings on the tree are part of Lenape culture. Sam goes to protest on his behalf, even stating some of the things he said. A Lenape chief who's present tells her that none of what she said was correct. Sasappis then comes clean and tells her the markings were for every time Shiki said "Hello" to him.
- Discussed and ultimately Defied on The Golden Girls. One episode revolves around preserving an old tree with the main dissenter being an old woman who seems to hate everyone. She gives no reason for wanting the tree to be cut down other than to spite everyone, even resorting to blackmail to push her goal. Eventually, Rose lashes out at her with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech which gives the woman a fatal heart attack. After she dies, the woman is mistakenly cremated and her ashes are spread around the tree, protecting it because no one wants to disturb someone's final resting place.
Music
- The Beach Boys: "A Day in the Life of a Tree" from their 1972 album Surf's Up is a song from the perspective of a tree that bemoans its fate as it dies from manmade pollution.
- In the modern folk-style song "The Willow Maid," a hunter falls in love with a forest nymph, but she does not love him back and refuses to leave her tree. He chops it down so she will have to go with him, but this kills her, and she transforms into a flower that will only bloom for a single night.
Theatre
- The Cherry Orchard ends with the Ranyevskaya family losing their estate and leaving in sorrow to the sound of the titular cherry orchard being cut down.
Video Games
- Fairy Bloom Freesia: By the end of the plot, the Wise Tree that Freesia goes to for guidance over the course of the game, has died.
- Flower Knight Girl: One set-piece of the western wasteland Kodaibana is its own World Flower. Unlike the other nation's World Flowers, the "golden" flower of Kodaibana has long since been reduced to a blackened and decayed shell of its former self, corresponding with the incident a thousand years ago that not only costed the previously lively nation, but also led to all the tragedy that befell Spring Garden.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- Defying this trope is the goal of the Hearers and Padjal of Gridania. Gridania was built in the Twelveswood with the permission of the elementals, fey entities who are a part the land and trees. The elementals can be driven into a frenzy if their trees are damaged without their consent, leading them to tell the Gridanians to protect these trees to preserve the health of the forest or suffer the consequences. The Guardian Tree is the body of a particularly powerful elemental in the heart of the Central Shroud. Protecting it from forces that would destroy it is a major goal of several questlines, including the White Mage quests and the Endwalker Tank role quests.
- The World Tree of the Nibirun is believed to symbolize the bonds between all of their people after they united as a Hive Mind to eliminate all strife. It withers into a husk of its former self after the Nibirun went mad with the realization that they have nothing to live or strive for and killed themselves with Ra-la, showing how those bonds have been severed.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Great Deku Tree, Guardian Spirit of the Great Forest of Hyrule, is a magnet for tragedy, though in most games he gets restored.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: In his debut game, the Great Deku Tree is cursed by Ganondorf with a gohma parasite for refusing to give him the Kokiri Emerald, a key needed to unlock the Sacred Realm. Though Link is able to go inside and destroy Queen Gohma, it is too late and the Tree withers shortly thereafter, leaving the Kokiri Forest completely unprotected from Ganondorf's magic. A new Deku Tree Sprout is able to emerge seven years later once Link cleanses the Forest Temple.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The Forbidden Woods appeared to be the host of the Great Deku Tree in a previous life, but it's gone, and in its place is the Kalle Demos parasite, which Link destroys. However, a new Deku Tree lives in the nearby Forest Haven.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Ganondorf curses the Deku Tree once again with a Gloom Hand/Phantom Ganon tormentor, which causes all sorts of problems to the wildlife of the Lost Woods and the Koroks. Once Link destroys the Phantom Ganon, the tree returns to health, but is still weakened from the ordeal.
- A recurring element in the Mana Series:
- Final Fantasy Adventure sees Julius destroy the Mana Tree as his last act, forcing the heroine to become its replacement.
- Secret of Mana sees the Mana Tree destroyed by Mana Fortress.
- Persona 3: The Hierophant Social Link follows an elderly couple, Bunkichi and Mitsuko Kitamura, who grow close to the protagonist as he reminds them of their deceased son. As the story progresses, we learn that a persimmon tree that was planted in their son's memory at Gekkoukan High, where he was a teacher, is scheduled to be cut down, much to their dismay. A petition is later made and signed by many former students to keep the tree as it is. The couple is touched to hear this, but when they learn that the tree was being cut down in order to build a new teaching wing, they decide to let the tree be cut down, as they believe their son would have wanted it this way.
Web Original
- Reddit has a subreddit known as r/treelaw which focuses on this trope in real life. They basically rally around the idea of protecting all trees and getting back at those who they believe illegally cut down trees.
Web Video
- Dream SMP: The L'Mantree was an oak tree on the outskirts of L'Manburg which symbolized the resilience of the city-state, as it was (in-universe) the sole surviving remnant of the original L'Manburg from their War for Independence, after which much of the country was destroyed in various wars and bombings. By the time of the Doomsday War, Niki starts to feel like the L'Manburg she knew had been long dead, and refuses to fight in the battle other than setting the L'Mantree alight with a flint and steel. The destruction of the L'Mantree is when virtually all of the remaining L'Manburgians and their allies give up on trying to save their ruined nation.
Niki: [after saluting the burning L'Mantree] It was never meant to be.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: The episode "Roots" has Stan fighting to save a tree that served as a father figure to him from being demolished to make way for the Langley Falls Bazooka Sharks arena. Stan ultimately realizes that he needs to be a father to Steve and goes to save him from Dr. Kalgary. When he leaves, the tree is unceremoniously dispatched by the construction firm for the arena.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog: In "The Magic Tree of Nowhere", Courage befriends the titular talking tree. When Eustace cuts him down, Courage lets out a Skyward Scream in grief and breaks down in tears, but the tree shares a few parting words with him and tells him about the cure to Muriel's illness.
- Molly of Denali: In "Big Sulky," everyone in Qyah is sad to see Big Sulky, the oldest tree in Qyah, has been knocked down, so the kids put together an exhibit at the library to commemorate it. The opening of the exhibit ends with the planting of a spruce sapling in Big Sulky's place.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Combined with Trash the Set. For the first four seasons, Twilight Sparkle lived in the Golden Oak Library, which was made out of a large tree in the middle of Ponyville. In the Season 4 finale "Twilight's Kingdom", Tirek destroys Golden Oak during his rampage, which Twilight is visiby distraught by. Season 5 episode "Castle Sweet Castle" centers around Twilight still mourning the loss of her old home, to the point where she actively avoids living in her new castle. She manages to move on by the end, after the Mane Six convert the remains of Golden Oak into a chandelier for the castle, adorned with gems showing memories of their time in the library.
- The Simpsons: In "Lisa the Tree Hugger", the oldest living Redwood tree in Springfield is in danger of being chopped down, so Lisa decides to live in the tree to prevent such a thing from happening. Lisa soon becomes homesick and decides to leave the tree only briefly to visit her family. Unfortunately, when she comes back, the tree is destroyed by a lightning bolt attracted by a metal bucket used by her to transport her things to the branch she was nested on. Lisa is presumed dead and decides to pretend she really is dead to ensure that the forest remains a natural preserve, but when the Rich Texan decides to make the forest the site of Lisa Land, the "polluting-est" amusement park ever, Lisa reveals that she's still alive and is outraged.
Real Life
- The Toomer's Corner trees hold a special place in the hearts and minds of any fan or alumni of Auburn University, located in Auburn Alabama. Any time Auburn sports have a triumph, the locals will flood the area and decorate the trees with toilet paper, a tradition known as "rolling the corner". However, this has made them a target for vandalism.
- In the aftermath of the 2010 Iron Bowl, in which the Auburn Tigers overcame a major deficit to defeat the Alabama Crimson Tide, a Tuscaloosa resident named Harvey Updyke Jr. traveled to Auburn and poisoned the trees and soil with a potent herbicide and then bragged about it on local radio a year later. The university's botanists were unable to save the trees, and the entire grove had to be completely uprooted and replaced with untainted soil and new trees.
- In 2016, the trees were set on fire by a man named Jochen West after the Auburn Tigers upset the Louisiana State Tigers. All of the new trees perished, including one unaffected by the blaze but unable to grow for different reasons, and new trees were planted.
- The Sycamore Gap tree was a 150-year-old sycamore tree located in a dip between two hills in Northumberland, UK. Its dramatic location made it a local icon, and its prominent appearance in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the associated music video for Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You"note brought it to global attention. It was felled by two vandals in 2023, and while it survived and has since sprouted, it will take another 150 years for the tree to grow back to its former glory.
- The Great Basin bristlecone pine Prometheus is believed to have been the oldest living non-clonal tree at around 5,000 years old at the time of its discovery in 1964, but its age was only found out when it was cut down for coring under disputed circumstances. This event was responsible for making bristlecone pines a protected species.
- The Mother of the Forest was a giant sequoia living in Calaveras Grove whose bark was stripped in 1854 and sent to New York and later London to be shown off in an exhibition, as people outside of the American West had problems believing that trees of its size could even exist. It died within five years of its bark being stripped, and public outcry over the death of the tree and the further cutting down of sequoias for lumber led to the eventual establishment of national parks to protect them.
- Kiidk'yaas was a Sitka spruce tree that stood on Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) in British Columbia. It had a unique mutation that made its needles golden instead of green, and it was sacred to the Haida people. It was cut down in 1997 by a non-Indigenous protester who was arrested for the crime but drowned before his trial. Attempts are underway to propagate saplings from Kiidk'yaas in hopes that they can be replanted where it stood.
- L'Arbre du Ténéré was a solitary acacia tree in Niger. It was considered the most isolated tree on earth, without another tree—or indeed, much of anything but desert—for hundreds of miles in any direction. Despite this, a drunk driver managed to drive into it in 1973 and knock it down.
- The Liberty Tree was a famous elm tree in Boston Common that was a common rallying point for anti-government protestors in 18th century Boston. At the start of The American Revolution, the tree was chopped down and turned into firewood by a mob of British loyalists. After the British abandoned Boston, revolutionaries erected a memorial at the site, which they referred to as the Liberty Stump.
- Mr. T caused an uproar in the upscale Chicago suburb of Lake Forest in 1987 when he bought a mansion there and over a hundred trees on the property cut down, allegedly because of his seasonal allergies. As the name implies, trees are Serious Business in Lake Forest, and outraged residents dubbed his actions the "Lake Forest Chain Saw Massacre." In response, the city council passed a law banning residents from cutting down a tree more than 6" wide without prior permission.