Why does the C++ STL not provide any "tree" containers?

Why does the C++ STL not provide any "tree" containers, and what's the best thing to use instead?

I want to store a hierarchy of objects as a tree, rather than use a tree as a performance enhancement...

There are two reasons you could want to use a tree:

You want to mirror the problem using a tree-like structure:

For this we have boost graph library

Or you want a container that has tree like access characteristics
For this we have

• std::map (and std::multimap)

• std::set (and std::multiset)

Basically the characteristics of these two containers is such that they practically have to be implemented using trees (though this is not actually a requirement).

See also this question:
C tree Implementation

Stack Overflow Q#205945, score: 204