Oak tree symbolizing Trump-Macron friendship dead

The tree was a symbolic gesture, it came from a northern French forest where 2,000 US Marines died during the First World War. But a few days later, the tree was nowhere to be seen.

The photo of Donald Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron planting an oak tree in the garden of the White House symbolized the friendship shown by the two leaders.

The sapling, a gift from Macron on the occasion of his state visit, is gone from the lawn. (AP Photo)

But relations between them have since frayed -- over issues ranging from Iran to trade -- and the tree, a diplomatic source said this week, did not survive.

The French president offered the young oak to Trump on the occasion of a state visit to Washington in 2018, and the two shoveled dirt around it under the watchful eyes of their wives -- and cameras from around the world.

It was a symbolic gesture: the tree came from a northern French forest where 2,000 US Marines died during the First World War.

But a few days later, the tree was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared into quarantine.

“It is a quarantine which is mandatory for any living organism imported into the US,” Gerard Araud, then the French ambassador to America, wrote on Twitter, adding that it would be replanted later.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)