This seems to work now: $ perl6 -e 'say (<a b c> Z <d e f> Z <g h i>).tree.perl' ("a", "d", "g"; "b", "e", "h"; "c", "f", "i").item
$ perl6 -e 'say (<a b c> Z <d e f>).tree.perl' ("a", "d"; "b", "e"; "c", "f").item $ perl6 -e 'say <d e f>.tree.perl' ("d"; "e"; "f").item Since there is a passing test for the second command in S02-lists/tree.t I'm going to close this ticket now. Should the above behaviour be wrongish, please reopen the ticket.