There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.

This line is associated with Betty Smith’s novel *A Tree Grows in Brooklyn* (1943), a coming-of-age story set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the early 20th century. The “tree of heaven” refers to the hardy ailanthus that sprouts in neglected urban spaces—tenement yards, cracks in pavement, and lots filled with rubble. Smith uses the image early in the book as a framing emblem for the Nolan family’s environment: poverty, crowding, and limited opportunity, but also persistence and aspiration. The tree’s ability to survive where other plants cannot mirrors the resilience of children growing up amid hardship in immigrant and working-class neighborhoods.

The quote turns an ordinary urban weed into a symbol of striving. The tree’s seed may land in hostile ground, yet it “struggles to reach the sky,” suggesting an innate drive toward growth and dignity even when circumstances are degrading. In the novel’s moral universe, survival is not merely endurance but a kind of upward longing: education, imagination, and self-respect pushing against social constraint. The image also carries an ambivalence—this tree is tough and ubiquitous, not delicate—implying that beauty and hope in such settings are inseparable from grit. It encapsulates the book’s central theme: aspiration rooted in adversity.