There is no question that Zenos was critical of the place in which the tree was planted, and since he was referring to the House of Israel, that central starting place, according to Exodus 15, can be understood as the temple mount. The tree was a representation of the whole House of Israel—their family tree if you will. How does this prophecy begin? A tree was planted and it was rotten to the core—so rotten that God had to come and chop off all the branches, take those branches, scatter them around somewhere, preserve them somehow, and keep the roots alive by bringing wild branches in. Now for the Jews, that was not very promising, was it?
When the tree did well, the whole House of Israel was doing well. In fact, there were other trees in this vineyard, but they are not quite as important to the Lord as this one tree, which was planted in the most prominent place. It was the one that he really is counting on to produce these best fruits.
In this image, individuals are but a leaf, a little twig, or a tiny part of that tree. That is the way ancient Israelites thought about their collective responsibilities, their civic duties, and who they were. Individuality was less important to them than group survival; individuals could not really survive in the ancient world all alone. They had to have a village; they had to work together; they had to share. One person raised olives and another person raised wheat. They had to work together in order to make that happen, and they were acutely aware of the responsibility of all to see that the whole of Zion or of the nation succeeded.
Book of Mormon Central, "What Are The Roots of Zenos’s Allegory in The Ancient World? (Jacob 5:3)," KnoWhy 70 (April 4, 2016).