Definition
Expeditate arbores is a Latin phrase from medieval English forest law meaning trees that have been rooted up or cut down to the roots. The term appears in the context of forest regulation, where the condition of trees — whether standing, felled, or entirely removed at the root — carried legal significance for rights of use, royal forest administration, and liability for waste or destruction of timber.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow term of art from medieval English forest law with no modern legal counterpart. Researchers encountering it will almost exclusively do so in primary sources or commentaries predating the eighteenth century — chiefly in materials touching the Forest Charter (Carta de Foresta, 1217), the legal treatise Fleta (late thirteenth century), and related administrative records of the royal forests. It does not appear in modern statutes or case law.
The practical research trap is mistaking this as a general botanical or agricultural term when it carries precise legal weight: the complete removal of a tree at the root, as opposed to mere coppicing, pollarding, or felling above ground, had distinct implications under forest law for what remained of the land, who bore liability, and what remedies attached. Researchers working in records of forest eyres, regarder's surveys, or timber waste proceedings should treat this phrase as a term of legal description, not casual language.
Because the term is essentially confined to the Fleta passage cited in both historical dictionaries, researchers should go directly to that source. Fleta, Book II, Chapter 41 is the controlling reference. Secondary commentary on English forest law — particularly works addressing waste and estovers — will provide the surrounding legal framework.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence give nearly identical, minimal entries: "trees rooted up or cut down to the roots," with Fleta, Book II, Chapter 41 as the sole authority. The two dictionaries are in complete agreement and are almost certainly drawing from the same original source. Neither entry elaborates on the legal consequences of the condition described, the procedural context in which the phrase arose, or its relationship to broader forest law doctrine.
The brevity of both entries accurately reflects the narrowness of the term. This is not a case where the historical dictionaries are missing important material — the phrase is simply a descriptive legal formula of limited scope. Researchers should not expect to find the term developed further in other historical legal dictionaries; it belongs to a stratum of medieval forest law vocabulary that was largely obsolete by the time systematic legal dictionaries were being compiled.
The Black's entry includes a fragment — "The beginning or introductory part of a speech" — that appears to be a typographical corruption or mis-splice from an adjacent entry in the original source and has no relevance to this term. Researchers encountering that language in Black's should disregard it as an artifact of printing or compilation error.
Jurisdictional Note
Expeditate arbores belongs exclusively to the English common law tradition and has no counterpart in American law. It is irrelevant outside the context of historical English forest law research.