arboricide

Noun

arboricide (countable and uncountable, plural arboricides)

1. Any herbicide intended to kill trees or shrubs.
   • Over a large area, trees of no commercial value such as figs, especially the so-called ‘strangling’ (epiphytic) varieties, together with Cynometra, Celtis spp. and Lasiodiscus were treated with a potent arboricide containing 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D dissolved in diesel oil.2005, Vernon Reynolds, The Chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest: Ecology, Behaviour, and Conservation, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 16

   Synonyms:

   silvicide

2. (uncommon) The killing of a tree.
   • President Hayes spoke of the gigantic trees which he had seen in California, one of which was so large that he and seven other persons rode into the hollow of its trunk. He had heard of the crime of arboricide, and agreed with Mr. Muzzey that it deserves punishment.1882, “Meeting for Discussion. Ornamental Arboriculture.”, in Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, for the Year 1882, part I, Boston, Mass.: […] the Society, page 16
   • Irresolutely she threaded her way among the motley crowd on the hot, unshaded platform of the station, pausing, because it seemed to bar her way, before the section of Pueblo’s king of cottonwoods, which advertising ingenuity has erected there,—fit monument, Donald had once said, for a city’s crime...1890 June, Mary E. Stickney, “Circumstantial Evidence. A Novel.”, in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, Philadelphia, Pa.: J. B. Lippincott Company, chapter VI, page 798