Mitt Romney loves Michigan. He loves the cars. He loves the people. He loves the…tree size? So he keeps telling us at least.

“This feels good, being back in Michigan,” he said in an economic speech on Friday. “You know, the trees are the right height.” It was the second time in the week that the Michigan-born Massachusetts governor praised the relative growth of the state’s flora as one of his favorite features.

But are they the right height? And is it a really weird thing to bring up? TPM set out to discover the truth of the matter (take that, Politifact) and found an intense horticultural debate that crosses traditional partisan lines.