Other forms: trees
A tree is the tall plant with a wooden trunk and branches. An oak tree, plant a tree, climb the tree.
There is no botanical definition — tree is a growth habit rather than a category, and palms, bananas and bamboo are not trees in any strict sense. Trees communicate through fungal networks in the soil, which is well established and often overstated. Note family tree, decision tree, tree diagram; and can't see the wood for the trees, meaning too close to the detail to see the whole.
1nountreeA tall plant with a wooden trunk and branches.
“The children climbed the old apple tree in the garden.”
2noundiagramA branching diagram.
“She drew a family tree showing all her cousins, parents and grandparents.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
tree is a plant or branching structure.
Old English treo descends from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning both tree and wood, which also gives Greek drus, an oak, and the word druid. Truth and trust come from the same root, from the idea of something as firm as a tree.
Proto-Indo-European
*dóru
Middle English
tre
English, today
tree
Built from
From Middle English tre. From Middle English trau, tre, tree, treo, treou, trew, trewe, troe, trouȝh, trouȝgh, trow, trowe, from Old English trēo, trēow, trēu, trīo, trīow, trȳw (“tree; wood; forest; beam, cudgel, log; cross”), from Proto-West Germanic treu, from Proto-Germanic trewą (“tree”), from pre-Germanic dréwom, thematic e-grade derivative of Proto-Indo-European dóru (“tree”). Related to tar, true. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA