Also called spirit tree, blue bottle tree, bottle tree spirit protection
A tree or post hung with glass bottles, traditionally cobalt blue, set in a yard in the American South so that wandering or harmful spirits are drawn into the bottles, trapped, and burned away by morning sun.
TraditionAfrican American yard tradition with Kongo roots
RegionAmerican South and Appalachia; the Caribbean
Era18th century to present
Moon◐ Any moon
DayAny
ElementAir
Difficulty●●○ Moderate
TimeAn afternoon
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
The working
Pick a spot near the path to the door or at the corner of the yard where people and spirits would pass.
Prune the branches of your tree or post to short, upward-angled stubs, or fix metal spikes into a post, so each can hold a bottle.
Wearing gloves, slide each bottle neck-first over a branch so the open mouth points toward the trunk and the bottle cannot fill with rain.
Secure each bottle with wire or adhesive so wind cannot knock it loose.
As you hang each one, say that any spirit or ill will that comes this way goes into the glass and no further.
Leave it in full sun. In the tradition, sunlight destroys what the bottles catch, and the moaning of wind across the necks is the trapped spirits.
Check the tree each season, replacing cracked bottles and tightening loose ones.
Take care: Wear gloves and eye protection when handling and fixing glass, secure every bottle firmly, and place the tree away from play areas, windows and walkways in case one breaks. Keep bottles tipped mouth-down so they do not collect rain and breed mosquitoes.
Versions across time and place
i
Kongo grave decoration
BaKongo of Central Africa and their descendants · Pre-colonial to 20th century
Thompson linked bottle trees to Kongo customs of honoring the dead with plates, bottles and vessels placed on graves and tree altars, objects associated with the spirit world across the water. African American graves in the South were decorated with glass, shells and broken pottery in the same spirit.
Uses: glass vessels, plates, shells
Recorded in: Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (1983) and The Four Moments of the Sun (1981, with Joseph Cornet)
ii
Welty's Mississippi bottle trees
Rural Mississippi, 1930s · 1935-1936
While working for the WPA, Eudora Welty photographed bottle trees beside Mississippi homes, among the earliest photographs of the form. Her short story 'Livvie' describes bottle trees set in a yard to catch evil spirits so they cannot get into the house.
Uses: crepe myrtle, colored bottles
Recorded in: Eudora Welty photograph 'The Bottle Tree', Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Welty, 'Livvie' in The Wide Net (1943)
iii
Garden art revival
Southern gardening · 1990s to present
Southern garden writers including Felder Rushing popularized bottle trees as folk art, and welded steel bottle-tree frames are now sold widely. Many owners keep them for color and heritage rather than spirits, though the blue-bottle protective meaning survives.
Uses: steel bottle-tree frame, wine bottles
Recorded in: Felder Rushing, Bottle Trees and the Whimsical Art of Garden Glass
History
The art historian Robert Farris Thompson argued that bottle trees descend from Kongo traditions brought to the Americas by enslaved Central Africans, who decorated graves and sacred trees with vessels and bright objects that bridged the worlds of the living and the dead. He and other scholars point to Caribbean records of the 1790s describing bottles hung in gardens, and the custom spread through plantation regions of the South, where cedar and crepe myrtle trees were favored.
By the 1930s bottle trees were familiar in Black and white rural yards from Mississippi to Appalachia, and Eudora Welty photographed them for posterity. Cobalt blue, often from old medicine bottles, became the preferred color. Some writers also note a European parallel in glass witch balls. The tradition is open and widely shared today; making one honors its African American and Kongo heritage.
Sources
Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy · Robert Farris Thompson, 1983
