Dreaming about
trees

A tree is the slowest thing most of us ever watch grow, and many of the trees we pass every day were there before we were born and will be there after us. So dreaming about trees tends to be about the long view of your life. It usually points to your own growth, to your family and where you come from, or to how steady things feel. Which one depends mostly on what happened to the tree.

A tall tree you rest under and a tree crashing through your roof are both tree dreams, but they hardly belong on the same page. What kind of tree it was matters too (an apple tree from your grandparents' garden carries more than any oak in a park), and so does whatever has been shaking your sense of stability lately.

What dreaming about trees means

A trunk adds a ring of wood each year, so it's a record of every good and bad year the tree has lived through. Trees hold on with roots you never see, and they shelter anything that needs it. Those three facts give most of the readings.

Your own growth

A tree dream often mirrors where you are in your life. A sapling points to something young in you, a new skill or a role you're still growing into, and a tall, full tree can be how you see yourself when things are going well. A tree growing faster than trees can is change in you that's happening quickly, ready or not.

Roots and family

We talk about "putting down roots" and drawing a "family tree", and dreams borrow both. A dream that dwells on the roots, especially roots coming out of the ground, is often about where you come from, an aging parent, a family secret or a move away from home. Strong, deep roots suggest you feel anchored, and shallow or torn ones ask what has loosened your hold on home.

Shelter and steadiness

People have always gathered under big trees, to rest, to talk or to get out of the rain. A tree that shelters you in a dream is often a person who does the same in waking life, a grandparent, a mentor or a partner, and sitting under it alone can be about wanting a place to stop. A tree that can't shelter you any more is often the first sign the dream is about losing that support.

Dreaming about a tree falling

A falling tree is the most searched tree dream, and it's about something solid giving way. Big trees fall in storms, from rot nobody saw or simply from age, and dreams use all three. If it fell in a storm, look for a sudden upheaval in your life. If it fell on its own, the dream may be about something that had been weakening quietly, like a parent's health, a marriage or a company you work for. A tree falling toward you or onto your house is the fear that the collapse will reach you, and it's a worry to look at, not a forecast.

Dreaming about climbing a tree

Climbing a tree is about ambition and about childhood at once, since it's the first risky climb most of us try. Getting higher usually means you're working your way up, at work or in some personal goal. Branches getting thinner as you go is the sense that the higher you get, the less there is to hold you, and being stuck at the top is a position you've reached and don't know how to leave.

Dreaming about cutting down a tree

Cutting down a tree is a choice that can't be undone, because a tree that took fifty years to grow is gone in an afternoon. A dream of doing it is often about ending something for good, a relationship, a habit or a family tie. Relief suggests something you've outgrown, while guilt or sadness points to something you might miss. If someone else was cutting down a tree you loved, think about who seems to be taking something from you.

Dreaming about a dead tree

A dead or bare tree is about something that has stopped growing, a friendship, a project or a part of yourself. But bare isn't the same as dead, and a tree with no leaves in winter will come back in spring, so a leafless one may be about a pause, a fallow season you'll come out of. If it was truly dead, hollow or rotten, ask what in your life has been kept standing out of habit.

Dreaming about a fruit tree

A tree heavy with fruit is about reward, what you've worked for finally coming in. Fruit rotting on the ground is something good going to waste, perhaps a talent you don't use. An apple tree adds a layer, since it's the tree most people picture in Eden, and the dream may touch on temptation or a choice you know has a cost.

Dreaming about a Christmas tree

A Christmas tree is a tree brought inside, cut and decorated, and the dream is nearly always about family, home and the year coming to an end. A beautiful one points to warmth and being together, a bare or falling one to a gathering you're dreading. There's more on the Christmas tree page.

Dreaming about trees according to Jung and Freud

Both men put trees on a list, though the lists point in different directions.

Jung: the tree among the mother symbols

Jung listed the tree among the symbols of the mother archetype, along with woods, the garden, the spring and the earth.^[1] Read that way, a tree that shelters you in a dream is the mothering in your life, from your mother or whoever played that part, and a tree that comes down is the loss of it. A forest is the same idea grown bigger.

Freud: the trunk

Tree trunks are on Freud's list of male symbols by name, in the company of sticks and umbrellas.^[2] In his reading, a dream about a tall trunk, or about cutting one down, could carry a sexual meaning or a fear about potency. Your own associations came before the symbol for him, though, and a tree you once had a swing in has plenty to say first.

Other readings

Ernest Hartmann, a psychiatrist who spent decades on what dreams do after a shock, took a dream's central image to be a picture of the dreamer's emotion. Two women he describes dreamed, within a week of losing their mothers, of a huge tree fallen in front of the house, and a man of 40 whose mother had died dreamed that a mountain split in two and a huge tree fell in front of him.^[5] In each, the tree was what had been holding the place up.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of trees in dreams

Trees in the Bible

Eden holds two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the whole story turns on the second one.^[3] Psalm 1 compares someone who lives well to a tree planted by the rivers of water, which brings forth its fruit in its season and whose leaf doesn't wither.^[4] If your tree dream felt spiritual, those are the two strands, choice and rootedness.

Trees in the Agni Purana

The Agni Purana is a Sanskrit text, and one of its chapters sorts dreams into good and bad omens. It puts climbing a tree and seeing one heavy with fruit on the good side.^[6] The same chapter calls seeing red flowers and trees a bad sign, so its readings pull both ways.

Questions to ask about your tree dream

The tree in your dream almost always stands for something you know well, and these questions help you find it.

• What kind of tree was it, and have you seen it in waking life?
• Was it growing, falling, being cut, bare or full of fruit?
• Where were its roots, and could you see them?
• Who does the tree remind you of, if anyone?
• What in your life feels less steady than it did a year ago?

Oniri asks about the place and the people around the tree before reading your dream, because the oak outside your childhood window and a pine in a stranger's garden rarely mean the same.