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British spy trees used for observation and sniper placement were designed by WW1 war artists including Leon Underwood. Completely convincing replicas were built from timber and steel based on sketches the artists made of existing battle-scarred stumps and tree trunks still standing in no man's land. The real tree was removed at night and replaced with the undetected copy. Leon Watson wrote an interesting article about these spy trees for The Mail Online. BLDBLOG has additional images and references the book, Hide and Seek by Hanna Rose Shell which explores the relationship between photography and camouflage. Shell writes that the artist's task "was to craft a mimetic representation of a tree—and not just any tree, but a particular tree at a specific site."
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