In one early fifteenth-century manuscript of Piers Plowman, Cotton Caligula A XI, housed in the British Library, the following exchange opens passus 16 of the poem. The Dreamer thanks Anima for his instruction on salvation, ecclesiastical history, and contemporary problems within the institutional church,

to which Anima replies, “hit is a ful drye tree … treuly to telle.” Textual error, however, has crept into the copy here: Langland's Tree of Charity is supposed to be a full trie tree — meaning fine or excellent — and indeed the Cotton Caligula text goes on to elaborate upon the leaves and blossoms of this marvelous wood. While we may dismiss such occurrences of textual error as proof of scribal incompetence, such a point of view does not alter the fact that Cotton's textual reading possesses sense as written, because its “ful drye tree” calls to mind the Dry Tree of medieval legend. But the background and significance of this fabulous tree, even though familiar in the Middle Ages since the thirteenth century when the Tree became a stock reference in travelogues and romances, are barely known in the twenty-first century outside the confines of art history.