Trees

Each land grows its own kinds of tree, 25 in all. Every one has its own shape and colours, and turns or stays green through the year in its own way. Trees of a kind keep together in stands about 60 m across.

By land

Land	Trees
Temperate forest	Oak, Beech, Birch
Taiga	Spruce, Larch, Birch
Temperate rain forest	Redwood, Mossy maple, Tree fern
Jungle	Kapok, Strangler fig, Coconut palm
Savanna	Acacia, Baobab
Shrubland	Olive, Cypress, Cork oak
Hills	Oak, Birch, Spruce
Steppe	Poplar, alone here and there
Desert	Dragon’s blood tree, very rare
Tundra	Dwarf willow, Dwarf birch
Mountain and snow	Treeline pine
Marsh	Weeping willow, Alder

By the water

Within 25 m of a river, lake or marsh the waterside trees grow instead:

Where	Trees
In the temperate lands, the taiga, the hills and the shrubland	Weeping willow, Alder
In the savanna and the jungle	Coconut palm, Strangler fig
On the steppe	Poplar, Birch
In the desert	Date palm: the oases
On the tundra	Dwarf willow
In the mountains	Treeline pine

Within 150 m of the sea the trees are windswept and lean inland: the Coast pine on cool coasts and the Coconut palm on warm ones.

The forests

The temperate forest, the temperate rain forest, the taiga and the jungle are old growth. Their trees stand two to four times as tall as out in the open, the tallest up to nine times, with fewer, bigger trunks over an open floor and saplings here and there. A stand may be young, grown or old, mostly old. Small clearings, open glades and grassy rides about 14 m wide wind between the stands, and more logs lie fallen among the old trees. Now and then an old giant stands among them: a tall bole on buttress roots, forking high into great limbs under a wide crown, so the canopy closes far overhead.

Under the trees it is dark and damp. Mist hangs low between the trunks, and shafts of sun slant down through the gaps.

Up close the trees are drawn in 3D, out to 2.5 km; beyond that the forest goes on as one canopy over its crowns, to the horizon.

The planted trees have their own pages: Fruit trees, Pollards, Hedgerow trees and Green trees. The greatest of all are the World trees.

Through the year

The leafy trees leaf out in spring and turn in autumn, each kind in its own colours, then stand bare through the winter, snow lying on their limbs. The conifers keep their needles, all but the larch, and the palms, the tree fern and the cypress stay green. Where it never grows cold, in the warm south, every tree keeps its leaves all year. A strong wind bends their crowns slowly and sets the leaves fluttering.

In play

A trunk stops men and horses, who go round it. On the map, trees slow an army by how thick they stand, a horse more than a man, and a cart needs a road through forest. Wildfire leaves them black and bare, and storms blow down patches of forest. Burnt and felled ground grows back over about four years. Villages by a forest fell a patch of it each season.