Definition
Trees that have been uprooted or cut down to their roots. The term describes timber or woody growth that has been completely removed from the ground — not merely trimmed or topped, but fully extracted or felled to the point where no stump remains above the surface. It appears in the context of medieval forest law and estate management, where the condition and disposition of trees on land carried legal significance for questions of waste, tenure, and timber rights.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in historical sources dealing with English forest law and feudal land tenure. Researchers encountering it in medieval records, plea rolls, or land surveys should recognize it as a descriptor of physical condition rather than a term of legal classification in its own right — it tells you what happened to the trees, not what legal rule applies. The primary research context is the law of waste: a tenant who caused or permitted expeditatje arbores without authority could be liable under an action of waste brought by the lord or reversioner. The term will not appear in modern case law or statutes. It belongs to the stratum of Latin forest law terminology that requires cross-referencing with treatises on English feudal tenure and the specialized vocabulary of Fleta and Bracton-era sources. Researchers working in that layer of the corpus should treat this as a factual descriptor embedded in a broader legal narrative about who had rights over timber and what constituted actionable interference with those rights.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) is the sole dictionary source for this entry and provides the entire substance of the received definition: "Trees rooted up or cut down to the roots," with attribution to Fleta, Book 2, Chapter 41. Fleta is a late thirteenth-century English legal treatise of uncertain authorship, written in Latin and modeled closely on Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. It is a primary source for understanding the administration of royal forests, manorial estates, and the obligations of tenants under feudal land law. The Black's entry is terse to the point of being a gloss rather than a definition, which is characteristic of supplemental entries dealing with rare Latin terms drawn directly from medieval sources. No other major historical legal dictionary — not Bouvier, not Tomlin's Law Dictionary, not Jacob's Law Dictionary — appears to carry this term, which indicates how narrow its currency was even in historical legal usage. The term is descriptive Latin, not a term of art with doctrinal freight of its own, and historical dictionaries treat it accordingly. Researchers should go directly to Fleta for context.
Jurisdictional Note
This term has no modern jurisdictional relevance. It is a feature of medieval English common law and forest administration. It does not appear in American legal sources.