In the wake of the current environmental crisis, scholars of late antique Christianity are beginning to study Christian attitudes towards the natural world. How did the early Christians relate to their environment? This article explores perceptions of trees, surveying the writings of Tertullian, Basil of Caesarea, and Sozomen the historian. What did an arboreal plant do, according to patristic authors? What kind of agency did they imagine trees to have? The investigation shows that members of the educated elite might think of trees as bodies with living, intelligent souls; they saw complex variety and gendered creatures with personal characteristics when they gazed at beings in bark. Certain arboreal species engaged in and were communicating through a sexual-life; many individuals made rational choices. Although trees are not free to move around, Christians assumed that boughs and branches could bend in devotion as trees expressed attention to divine presence.