The sessile oak tree, given by French President Emmanuel Macron to his US host Donald Trump and planted by the two on the White House lawns, has perished in quarantine, French media reported.
The sad demise of the tree was revealed on Saturday, when Le Figaro newspaper wrote it can confirm an earlier report by Le Monde, citing unnamed French officials. The tree originally sprouted in a forest in the Belleau Wood area, where thousands of the US soldiers perished during the WWI and was meant to symbolize strong ties between the two countries as it grew.
The sapling-planting stunt, part of Macron’s April 2018 visit, has caused a whole wave of mockery – and the disappearance of the oak from the White House lawn just a day after triggered emergence of a whole bunch of wild theories.
It was later explained that the oak was taken into a mandatory quarantine by the US Department of Agriculture, meant to prevent a potential spread of foreign plant diseases onto American soil. The tree was expected to spend some two years in isolation, yet it turned out to be not all oak and made it through only one before dying in “custody.”
In fact, Macron is said to have given Trump a backup tree, but its fate is unknown. If it survives the US bureaucracy, a tree of French-American friendship might still appear on the grounds of the presidential residence.
Also on rt.com Dude, where’s my tree? Twitter abuzz after oak planted by Trump & Macron ‘vanishes’
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