When you hunt the tree of heaven, you come to know it by its smell. A waft of creamy peanut butter leads you to a tall trunk, silvery and nubbled like cantaloupe rind, rising into a wide crown of papery pink seeds and slender leaves. To kill this tree, you cannot simply cut it down with a chainsaw. Ailanthus altissima is a hydra; it counters any assault by sealing off its wounds and sending up a horde of new shoots across its root system. Where you had one tree, now you have a grove of clones extending 25 feet all around you. No, the trick to killing this tree, Triston Kersenbrock explained,
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