So in the issue when Jean grey went Dark Phoenix because of Mastermind/Jason Wyngarde and the Hellfire club and all that, she has a brief fight with the X-Men in Central Park, where she at one point decides on the offensive move of turning an entire tree into gold by manipulating it's molecules

With the X-men beaten, she zips of into space, and Beast turns up and helps Colossus and Wolverine out from under the tree (wonder how much time they spent there)

Nightcrawler's comment always had me wondering - what ever happened to that tree. That's a LOT of money right there.

So I wonder if the hold tree ever turned up in another story. Like maybe Doc Ock tried to steel it, or Reed Richards did experiments on this artificial super gold. Or it could have just been mentioned, what happened with it.

So just wondering if anybody ever saw the tree mentioned again? The scans are from Uncanny X-Men ish 135...

How do you think the Xmen got money to buy all that jet fuel

Phoenix using Jeans body don't have that transmutation power. But I guess she amplified Colossus power to something he already don't know...

she also transmuted a plant into cyrstal

No, it’s in her powerset to transmutate matter. If she forced Colossus to do something, Colossus would state Jean was forcing him to do something to the tree.

Essentially, the Phoenix manipulated the molecular structure of the tree into gold atoms.