The paper develops a rather unexpected parallel to the multivariate Matsumoto--Yor (MY) property on trees considered in \cite{MW04}. The parallel concerns a multivariate version of the Kummer distribution, which is generated by a tree. Given a tree of size $p$, we direct it by choosing a vertex, say $r$, as a root. With such a directed tree we associate a map $Φ_r$. For a random vector ${\bf S}$ having a $p$-variate tree-Kummer distribution and any root $r$, we prove that $Φ_r({\bf S})$ has independent components. Moreover, we show that if ${\bf S}$ is a random vector in $(0,\infty)^p$ and for any leaf $r$ of the tree the components of $Φ_r({\bf S})$ are independent, then one of these components has a Gamma distribution and the remaining $p-1$ components have Kummer distributions. Our point of departure is a relatively simple independence property due to \cite{HV15}. It states that if $X$ and $Y$ are independent random variables having Kummer and Gamma distributions (with suitably related parameters) and $T:(0,\infty)^2\to(0,\infty)^2$ is the involution defined by $T(x,y) =(y/(1+x), x+xy/(1+x))$, then the random vector $T(X,Y)$ has also independent components with Kummer and gamma distributions. By a method inspired by a proof of a similar result for the MY property, we show that this independence property characterizes the gamma and Kummer laws.