Abstract. Suppose that X is a Banach space, a ij is a regular method of summability and (x s ) s∈S is a bounded sequence in X indexed by the dyadic tree S. We prove that there exists a subtree S ⊆ S such that: either (a) for any chain β of S the sequence (x s ) s∈β is summable with respect to a ij or (b) for any chain β of S the sequence (x s ) s∈β is not summable with respect to a ij . Moreover, in case (a) we prove the existence of a subtree T ⊆ S such that if β is any chain of T , then all the subsequences of (x s ) s∈β are summable to the same limit. In case (b), provided that a ij is the Cesàro method of summability and that for any chain β of S the sequence (x s ) s∈β is weakly null, we prove the existence of a subtree T ⊆ S such that for any chain β of T any spreading model for the sequence (x s ) s∈β has a basis equivalent to the usual l 1 -basis. Finally, we generalize the theory of spreading models to tree-sequences. This also allows us to improve the result of case (b).