It's actually an easy mistake to make.  "Small pig or is it an apple tree."  Via UFO Newsclipping Service, 1994.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"I couldn't see the wood for the trees...and I planted the forest myself" (Harry Carmichael, False Evidence).

There is a forest of glowing trees that can be navigated only via old yearbooks.  From Colorado State's 1969 yearbook.

Though perhaps not as popular as phonebooth stuffing, hollow tree stuffing offered a deeper sense of communion.  From Swarthmore's 1974 yearbook.

“You resist / strangers until a stranger makes the old hungers / brutally wake.” —Frank Bidart, "Like," Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 

Photo from Swarthmore's 1974 yearbook.

From the University of the South's 1993 yearbook.

From The Link, 1958.

"A world removed."  From West Virginia Wesleyan's 1964 yearbook.

Why this particular ordering of the seasons: autumn, winter, spring, summer?  In the universe of universities, the year begins in the autumn.  We began our own college career in the spring, and our body clock has been "off" ever since.

From Elizabethtown's 1966 yearbook.

"Or shall truer songs stir us and this time pass away?"  From West Georgia's 1973 yearbook.

For years we've documented folks disguised as Christmas trees, but this one is more properly "Disguised as a Christmas tree ornament."  From Morris Harvey's 1970 yearbook.

Here's a precursor to the film Repo Man.  (I do wonder if that tree is still glowing.  Probably so.)  From Bryan's 1982 yearbook.

From Wake Forest's 1980 yearbook.

Our eye alighted upon a fairy standing immediately to the left of the tree trunk.  We zoomed in and provided an outline to show you what we saw.  From Wesleyan College (Macon GA)'s 1924 yearbook.