Is there anyway to attach papyrus scripts to trees or will I have to go old school oblivion style and write a quest script that can identify the editor ID and use an if block? (If not I hope Bethesda employees see this as a request for the next patch if at all possible *gets on knees and begs*)

you already can attach a script to a tree (on the reference not the base)

depends on what you need it to do though

I need it to attach to the base, I would like to create a wood chopping skill that can be used away from the chopping blocks to harvest branches and such for fletching. It would be easiest to do this with an OnHit event, but I can't attach the scripts. I've done a bit more research since I posted this question :/ . So what I'm probably going to do is sort of like I did in the Oblivion scripting engine that will basically actively monitor the situation until I do hit and object with the editorID i'm after and go from there. (Really was avoiding that because it's a little heavier on the cpu and is more likely to bloat a save game.)

Yes, you can attack scripts to trees, just edit the tree and go to the script tab and add a script of your choosing or create a new one.

You can attach to an individual tree, but it would take forever to attach it to a few thousand individual trees. Hence why I would like to attach it to the base instead.

fwiw you can create a custom tree as a flora object, then attach a script to the base. of course the downside is you would not be able to control speedtree physics and you would have to run a search/replace on worldspace to replace the existing trees with your custom one

Check out http://www.creationkit.com/Dynamically_Attaching_Scripts#Attaching_Scripts_to_Objects on the CK-wiki, it might help you.

TYVM! That was exactly what I needed.