When does a tree become a tree...?

Question

..to be more specific when/does the trunk start growing without any braches to become the shape of a tree?

Answer 1

Thinking of ones like oaks or maples growing in an isolated area it can start with just a pair of leaves at the top, coming from the sprouted seed. By the next year it soon has more buds on the side that new leaves can come from. Those become new branches and they are fairly close to the ground. The branches will continue while the main stem grows up straight. Those branches are often broken or nibbled off by animals or pruned by gardeners. When you see a tree trunk that has no branches for the bottom eight feet or so that is because it lost the lower ones.

If however that seedling was growing in an area with a lot of other seedlings, in the shade of the mother tree, it may continue up for a few years without the side buds. When it gets enough light on it then it develops branching. That is why tree farmers like to plant trees close, to get the straight wood without knots from side branches.

Ones like fruit trees are usually carefully pruned to get an open top with no leading branch but a lot of wide apart side branches at convenient heights for picking. That is to grow fruit with a lot of sunshine and less chance of the tree splitting from a heavy crop.

Answer 2

i'm in basic terms going to anticipate from the get-go that it particularly is an abortion argument, definite? properly, i ought to incredibly define the seed as a "pink maple" from the very commencing up. "I incredibly have a pink maple seed in my hand." in an analogous way, i'm able to define a human zygote as "human." notwithstanding, i would not call the pink maple a "tree" until eventually it became finished-grown. Likewise, i might by no ability examine with a zygote as an "grownup." the situation is that existence is a continuum, no longer a sequence of properly-defined steps. there are a number of stuff in between the seed and the tree- there are much extra between the zygote and the grownup. If that is ok to squash the seed, yet to no longer chop down the tree, the place is the line drawn? can i spray some herbicide on that sapling over there? i think of you are able to tell the place i'm going with this- while there is not any sturdy black line, you ought to play it risk-free and err on the facet of existence.