Bottle tree mystery puzzles Wellesley

We heard from a couple of regular Swellesley readers today who sent us photos of a tree at Wellesley College decorated with empty bottles.  They wondered: What’s up with that?

The tree can be found not far from the Upland Road entrance to the school.

Following some slapdash research, we have read of a tradition passed along from Central Africa of people hanging bottles in trees in hopes of nabbing evil spirits. But since we don’t have any such spirits around here, we’re not sure what’s going on.

The Wellesley College campus is always something of a ghost town around the holidays, but we’ve never seen bottle trees like this before. We thought maybe there would be a clue from looking at the upcoming Davis Museum exhibits, but it doesn’t appear so.

Does anyone know what this is all about or have theories?

The bottles in the tree reminded us a bit of a trend a few years back in Wellesley that involved yarn being knitted around tree trunks and limbs.

BONUS! One of our contributing photographers also took note of this nearby freaky tree with a face.