Unless you have done the Tree Gnome Village quest, you have to rely on friends or the random chance of being near enough to a sprouting tree to see its roots. Those who have done the quest can ask the spirit trees about the occurrence of an evil tree. A spirit tree can also teleport you to an evil tree after it has fully matured.

When asking the spirit tree about an evil tree in between each evil tree's existence, it will give an approximation on the time until the tree appears.

An evil tree's life is rather short. The information from a spirit tree puts the sapling's life to about 4 minutes. It appears at a spot and goes through 4 growth spurts prior to emerging as an evil tree. Evil trees are fairly random in timing world to world and the appearance of trees in each world can be any of the 26 spots randomly.

Once you are within a short walk of the tree, a set of roots assault you quickly. This lets you know you are close. When you get to it, if it is still as a sapling, you can start nurturing it for farming experience. No tools are required to nurture it.

When it finally matures, its roots protect it and can stun you or knock you down when you try to chop on the tree. You must cut some roots to get at a tree. This also gives you kindling if you want to burn it too. You should bring your best woodcutting axe but you can get a bronze axe as well as a tinder box from the leprechaun who tends the tree.

With the roots cut away you can damage the tree by cutting and burning it. Inspecting the tree (right-click) lets you see how much health it has left and how much of a reward percentage you have collected helping to defeat it. The tree has 4 stages of health at which you have to start chopping it again; being 100%, 75%, 50% and 25%.

Once it's dead, you can collect your reward from the stump. Look for more about the rewards below. You can also turn in unused kindling to the leprechaun for 25 GP each.

You only get 2 chances a day to work on an evil tree. After you have had 2 tries, you will not be able to work on a new couple until midnight UTC+0 (aka GMT or Zulu). Here are the levels required for each task and the experience for each unit. Farming experience allots for every level it grows while you tend it. Woodcutting experience occurs on a random hit (there is a small animation of flying wood chips when it happens, only you can see your animation). Firemaking experience is applied once for each of the eight possible sides you light.

Every time you finish cutting a root from an evil tree, you get 1 bit of evil tree kindling. In order to light any of the 8 sides of a tree you need a portion of kindling and the roots on that side must be cut back. Once a section is lit, it stays lit until the tree dies.

A group of cutters can gang a root to kill it faster and everyone that is cutting on that root when it is removed gets a portion of kindling. Your reward increases faster if you burn the tree and the more you burn it the faster it goes.

Kindling can be banked instead of turned in to the leprechaun. By keeping extra kindling in the bank, there can always be eight pieces to take to the next new tree. With kindling at the start, you can burn an entire side of a tree when the root is cut back on that side. This allows you to start making more reward sooner both in burning as much as possible, as soon as possible, and getting to work on the body of the tree sooner.

You develop a certain amount of reward by helping to destroy a tree. Every bit of wood you cut from the body of a tree adds to your reward percentage. Every fire you have going, over the time the fire is burning, also adds to the reward. The object is to get 100% of your reward before the tree expires.

The items of that reward are left in the stump after you kill it. If you forget to pick up a reward from a tree, you can collect it from the leprechaun at another evil tree.

Rewards include 4-358 bank notes for logs (depending on type) of the type of tree you did (elders produce teak, mahogany, yew or magic log notes), 80-8200 GP, and items including any tree seed, treasure trail clues, and key halves.

The other reward is magic log banking/tree life extension. For a period of time that the leprechaun mentions, when cutting wood, if your inventory is full, all wood you cut will go straight to your bank. Also, a tree you are cutting in that time will be less likely to be felled or finished. This life extension only applies to regular, oak, willow, maple, yew or magic trees and does not apply to any farm plot grown trees.