President Donald Trump’s administration is facing backlash after quietly loosening the rules around a genetically engineered tree — and, internal documents suggest, may have already broken its own containment rules doing so.

The controversy traces to April, when the administration planted two genetically modified American chestnut trees in President’s Park, across from the White House, as an Arbor Day photo op, reported the Washington Post. The variety, Darling 54, carries a wheat gene designed to resist the blight that essentially wiped out the species a century ago.

Internal documents reviewed by the Post, along with a source not authorized to speak publicly, indicate staffers failed to control the trees’ pollen-releasing flowers — an apparent violation of the USDA permit requiring “confinement of the regulated article to prevent its unauthorized release, dispersal, and/or persistence in the environment.”