A 600 year old Texas live oak tree that survived a 1989 attempted poisoning.
Treaty Oak is the last surviving member of the Council Oaks, a stand of large live oak trees that were a meeting place for the Tonkawa, Comanche, and Hasinai. With downtown Austin growing up around it, its sibling trees were all lost to neglect or cut for development by the early 1900s. In 1937, the land under the tree was purchased by the city and a plaque was erected at its base (with some unsubstantiated and likely-fabricated claims about it being a location for treaty-signing).
In 1989, Treaty Oak was the victim of a poisoning. That summer, it was dosed with the powerful herbicide Velpar. Enough poison was dumped on its roots to kill hundreds of trees. This made headlines and news reports worldwide for weeks, and thousands of visitors to the tree left candles, cans of soup, crystals, and flowers around the trunk. The fence was spiked with get well soon cards. The Dalai Lama visited.
On the back of a $10,000 bounty offered by Velpar's manufacturer, a culprit was arrested after he bragged about killing the tree to complete an anti-love spell. He was charged with a felony on this and some physical evidence, but denied that his confession was true. He spent three years in prison and maintained his innocence the entire time.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent trying to save the tree. Soil was cleared from its base, salt and then sugar solutions were injected into the trunk, and fastidious trimming and pruning attempted. Nothing seemed to help. Eventually, the city began to cut the tree into usable pieces, turning Treaty Oak into commemorative boxes, paperweights, pens, and picture frames. Two-thirds of the way through the cutting, the tree seemed to stabilize.
It produced a crop of viable acorns in 1997, confirming that the tree had indeed healed. It continues to grow, somewhat lopsided, now.