This Mishnah will talk about somebody who purchased fruit trees in somebody else’s property. What are his rights? The Mishnah says that if somebody buys two fruit-bearing trees in his friend’s field, he has not purchased the land under the trees. He has the ability to use those trees themselves. They’re his property. He owns the trees. But the actual property, the land underneath, is not his. According to Rabbi Meir, he has bought the land under it as well. The machloket (dispute) over here is: Did he buy the orchard? Did he buy select trees, or did he buy the orchard? According to Tanna Kamma (first Tanna), when you buy two trees, it’s not enough to be considered that you bought the whole orchard. So you only have rights to those trees. According to Rabbi Meir, if you bought two trees, you now have bought the entire orchard, or that orchard around it. And therefore, you have the right to the property underneath it. Everybody would agree that one tree is just a tree, and you don’t have the right to the property underneath it.
The buyer has certain rights according to Tanna Kamma. Since he only owns the tree, what are his rights to that actual tree? Higdilu, if the tree grew after the sale, lo yeshapeh, the seller is not allowed to cut back the tree, even though that growth may be damaging the property underneath it, which is the seller’s property. The seller is not allowed to cut it back. It’s not his tree. And since he sold that tree to him, the seller is also obligated to take care of the land and provide support for the tree while it’s living, so he can’t cut it back. Veha'oleh min ha-geza shelo. Whatever branches come out of the trunk of the tree belong to the buyer. They’re never considered to be their own entity, even though they’re coming out of the tree. You may view the trunk of the tree as another tree, but the chiddush (novel point) is no. They’re part of that same tree. U-min ha-shorashim shel ba'al ha-karka. But if it’s coming out of the roots of the tree, which are below the ground, then they’re considered to be owned by the seller, by the actual owner of the field. We’re nervous that if we say they’re the buyer’s property, the buyer would now claim that it’s a separate tree. Since it’s underground, it’s a separate tree. And he’s going to try to say that he owns three trees in this little orchard, which, as the Mishnah will continue to tell us, would give him ownership of the orchard according to Tanna Kamma.
Ve'im metu ein lo karka. If the trees die, according to Tanna Kamma, as we said earlier, who said he only owns the trees, not the property under them, he has no right to plant new trees in their place. He has to uproot those dead trees and remove them from the land. That’s everything we said about somebody who owns more than—or less than—three trees. But if somebody buys more than three trees, then it’s considered to be a different situation. It’s as if he owns the whole field with the trees, and the following laws would apply. Kana shelosha. He bought three or more trees. Kana karka. He also bought the land under it between the trees and the trees themselves. He bought the entire orchard, the entire land in this situation. If he buys three or more trees, higdilu, if the trees grow after the sale and they go all over the seller’s property, the seller has the right to cut them back. The shade of that tree is over his property. It’s damaging his land, and the buyer can’t have any claim because he didn’t buy that piece of land. The piece of land that’s hanging over is not over what he bought.
Whatever branches come out of the tree, if they grow from the trunk of the tree or they grow out of the roots of the tree, in this situation, they belong to the buyer. In both situations, they’re part of the tree itself. And therefore, it’s his because even the ground is his in this situation. We’re not concerned with what we were concerned about in the last part of the Mishnah, when he only bought two trees. We were nervous that the branch coming out from the roots would look like a third tree, and people would think that he bought the entire tree. We don’t want to leave a claim for that, or the ability to make that claim, when he bought two trees. But in this case, where he bought three, there’s no more chashash, there’s no more nervousness. So we say that even that branch that comes out of the root is his. Ve'im metu yesh lo karka, and if the tree dies, he still owns the land and he can do whatever he wants on it, including planting new trees.