Hopefully people will start to rethink the cult of trees in the wake of near disasters like these:

A 50-foot tree towering over a Manhattan schoolyard full of kids came crashing down with little warning yesterday — striking more than a dozen shrieking first-graders scattering away from its path.

The tree buckled a sidewalk and fell into the yard of Manhattan’s Epiphany School at about noon.

A parent volunteer, identified by her husband as Monica Tompos, went to Bellevue Hospital with head and neck injuries, authorities said.

Emergency responders treated 13 children, mostly first-graders, in the school’s office for minor scrapes, bumps and bruises.

“I just heard all the little kids screaming and I put my hands up to block my head, but I got hit with the branches,” said Danniella Tompos, 13, an eighth-grader.