This isn't the kind of story Garden Variety likes to read at this time of year.

Someone stole a Christmas tree. And not just any tree, but a rare tree carefully cultivated from a seedling in a Seattle, Wash., arboretum.

The 7-foot conifer, nurtured for more than a decade, was one of the park's rarest specimens, an imperiled species collected from the mountainous Yunnan province in China.

"It makes me want to cry," said Randall Hitchin, manager of living collections for the University of Washington Botanical Gardens, which include the arboretum.

Baltimore's Angela Treadwell-Palmer, of Plants Nouveau and one of my favorite plant people, said authorities should check all the trees put out for recycling after after the holiday to find the scoundrels.