Beloved "Trees"

As I have been reading “Beloved” I have found multiple reappearing ideas, moods, metaphors or “motifs”.  One of these many motifs is Morrison’s use of “trees”.  When Sethe still lived at Sweet Home she was whipped and the after affect of that was a large scar on her back that she says resembles a tree. When Paul D arrives at her house and after they spent the night together in morning as he gazes at her scar he realizes that it is just “a revolting clump of scars”. That it was not a image of life and rebirth as many trees symbolize. It was not inviting it was revolting.  Then Paul D starts to remember his tree. His “brother”.  One of the beautiful trees that he and his fellow Sweet Home men, would sit and lay under.  In Beloved these trees are a mixed symbol of life and death. Because even though Paul D called his tree his “brother”, it was the same trees that would hang his fellow men. The same trees that took life away. And even though Sethe tree was given to her in a time of when she created a new life for herself, it still haunts her, with her memories. Morrison brings back trees with Beloved appears in the story. They found her sitting next to a tree stump. “A life that has stopped.“ Could this stump foreshadow Beloved and her story?