By Adam Nichols
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — Mindless vandals are ripping down city trees in a wave of arborcide.
More than 100 attacks were reported last year, according to records seen by the New York Post.
Already, 18 people have been summonsed for damaging plants in 2011.
Incidents include a Christmas night slaughter of six saplings in the Playground of the Americas on Houston Street, and damage to five honey locusts on Chambers Street in February.
In one attack last year, a briefcase-swinging madman destroyed several trees in Battery Park City, the Post said.
In another, a tree in St. Nicholas Park, in Harlem, was set on fire.
"Some of this is just outright abuse," Geoffrey Croft of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates told the Post.
According to the Post, a tree costs the city $1,780 to plant.
The newspaper said abusers were hit with $123,000 in fines last year.