I know that you can change the Tree.collapsedIcon for a all JTrees in an application using Swing using the UImanager. For example:
Tree.collapsedIcon
JTrees
UImanager
If you make the assumption that TreeUI that you are using is an instance of BasicTreeUI, you can do the following:
instance of
BasicTreeUI
TreeUI tui = treeInstance.getUI(); if (tui instanceof BasicTreeUI) { ((BasicTreeUI)tui).setCollapsedIcon(myIcon); }