Consider these six plants.
It might not seem like going out on a limb to call them all trees.
But botanically speaking, only three make the cut.
Take a guess which.
Generally, true trees are tall, woody plants that have leaves and one load-bearing trunk.
They begin their lives with primary growth, where a soft stem develops upwards until secondary growth kicks in and the stem bulks out into a woody trunk.
From there, trees keep growing taller from their crown, and wider, so new rings expand their trunks annually.
Working off that rubric, identifying a tree might seem simple.
But not so fast.
What makes or breaks a tree can come down to some pretty specific characteristics, based on how the plant develops as a result of how it evolved.
