Aesop

The Plane Tree

Summary


"The Plane Tree" is a short fable by Aesop in which two weary travellers escape the midday heat beneath the broad shade of a plane tree — only to scorn it for bearing no fruit. When the tree itself speaks, its quiet rebuke cuts to the heart of the story: how easily people enjoy a blessing while dismissing its worth. In just a few lines, Aesop captures the gap between what we receive and what we choose to acknowledge.

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Two Travellers, walking in the noonday sun, sought the shade of a widespreading tree to rest. As they lay looking up among the pleasant leaves, they saw that it was a Plane Tree.

“How useless is the Plane!” said one of them. “It bears no fruit whatever, and only serves to litter the ground with leaves.”

“Ungrateful creatures!” said a voice from the Plane Tree. “You lie here in my cooling shade, and yet you say I am useless! Thus ungratefully, O Jupiter, do men receive their blessings!”

Credits

Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, believed to have lived around the 6th century BCE, whose fables have shaped moral literature across the world for over two millennia. "The Plane Tree" is among his briefest works, yet its single dramatic turn — a tree that answers back — gives it a theatrical punch rarely found in such compact storytelling.
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