Interesting, Nerd--point well-made about the colonial appropriation of similar religious practices under the Roman umbrella of Diana. The period from which I'm picking up the term "cult" is how it was applied by the church in Rome at the time the Gnostics were crushed, and earlier. With admittedly sketchy reading about this period, I will note that there was a movement to squash religious impluse that allowed believers to practice without the supervision of an organized church. Such a movement was a threat because believers didn't have to pay (tithe) anyone to tell them how to believe and live and enrich the church in the process.

Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance dips into a number of these topics as it explores the various Arthur and Green Knight legends.

Oak and pines were both important in the Phrygian religion of Cybel and Attis. Pines moreso, I think. In the New World you will find any number of trees that had an equally huge religious significance. For example, the Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) of the Northwest was medicinal/spiritual as well as material for shelter and clothing, carved for boats, masks, poles, almost everything. You can light it under some pretty adverse conditions. The spiritual importance probably comes about because of all of the others uses.

A "tree" song my father used to sing often was named something along the lines of "the Madrona" (is it also called a "Rowan?"). It has been many years since I heard it, so I may be combining tree names. The young woman loves one man, but her father wants her to marry a rich noble. He tells her to undress for the nobleman, and she turns into the tree that peels its bark (the Madrona).

SRS