A tree gifted to President Donald Trump by French President Emmanuel Macron has disappeared from the White House lawn.

The pair planted the sapling, taken from the site of a World War One battle in north-east France, last week.

Mr Macron said the tree would be a reminder of "these ties that bind us".

But a Reuters photographer on Saturday took a shot of only a yellow patch of grass where the tree once stood. The French ambassador to the US later tweeted the sapling was in quarantine.

The tree, a European sessile oak, came from the site of the Battle of Belleau Wood, which took place in the summer of 1918.

Nearly 2,000 US soldiers died in the battle north-east of Paris.

Yet only four days after it was planted, the sapling has disappeared.

French radio network Franceinfo quotes gardening site gerbaud.com, which says this type of oak is better planted in autumn, giving it time to grow deep roots "to face the drought of the following summer".

Later, French Ambassador Gerard Araud said the sapling had been placed in quarantine.

Mr Araud also sought to placate concerns about the tree having been planted at all.

The roots, he explained, had been wrapped in plastic.

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