Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. annoyed, emotionally unstable.

1861		Fun 5 Oct. 41/2: Poor Lord Bateman felt, as low folks / Do express it, ‘up a tree’.
1877		Hartford Herald (KY) 3 Oct. 6/1: Say, sis, how are you at school — up a tree?
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 May 4/4: Joe Wallace the proprietor of New Zealand Punch, is ‘up a tree.’ He will probably [...] carry on the same old game i.e. project and publish a subsidised comic weekly, and then ‘smash’.
1907		Brisbane Courier 29 May 6/3: Billy was on a good wicket, but poor old Nipper was fair up a tree.
1912		A. Berkman Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 172: You talk like a man up a tree, you holy sky-pilot.
1924		Gippsland Times (Vic.) 15 Sept. 1/4: And then he says where he’s concerned he’s fairly up a tree.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 49: One day a bloke told me ya first name was ’Oward, but I tells him he’s up a tree.
1951		M. Spillane One Lonely Night 54: What’s there about me that has you up a tree?
1975		G. Underwood ‘Razorback Sl.’ in AS L:1/2 68: That guy drove me up a tree.

2. (mainly Aus.) in a problematic situation.

1866		Sportsman 15 Sept. 2/1: Notes on News [...] Stephens, the Fenian head centre, seems, in Yankee phrase, ‘up a tree.’ Some say he is a patriot of the purest water; others that he is [...] a British spy.
1879		H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 283: ‘I’ve often heard one fellow say to another, ‘he’s up a tree, but I never knew what it was to be up a tree before’.
1884		Sporting Times 9 Feb. 1/3: The best sportsman we ever met was once, not unlike a good many of us, up a very tall financial tree.
1891		Sporting Times 7 Feb. 3/2: The Dook o’ Gooseberry (a limb of a noble ‘branch,’ at present rather up a ‘Tree’).
1893		D. Fergussen Bush Life in Aus. & N.Z. 197: So I says to myself, ‘Self, old man, it’s all up a tree with you now’.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 91: Tree,‘up a tree,’ gone insolvent, in difficulties, etc.
1897		M. Gaunt Kirkham’s Find [ebook] The boss he talks cheerful enough, but he knows it’s all up a tree with us - no man better.
1905		‘Banjo‘ Paterson Old Bush Songs 49: A squatter in the future I’ve no doubt you may be, / But if the banks once get you, they’ll put you up a tree.
1913		J. Farrell How He Died 98: Ha! upon his leg, I see, is / The iron-mark! If any of the rest / Know this, I fear his chance right up a tree is.
1921		C.J. Dennis Book for KIds 96: The overseer rode in at three, / But his horse pulled back and would not gee, / And the stockman said, ‘We’re up a tree!’.
1946		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 2 Feb. 23: That Metro production of ‘Ziegfeld Follies’ [...] got such a panning [...] that the studio is up a tree.

3. drunk.

1933

‘William Juniper’ True Drunkard’s Delight 225: Our tippler [...] is up a tree.