It is a nice afternoon and you are spending time in the garden. While you are looking at the trees and shrubs around you, you start to wonder about the differences between the shrubs and the tree. You want to know the limits to which extend that the shrubs can be categorized as shrubs and trees are trees. Is it the size that differentiates the two? Or is it something else?
Before we go to the differences, we first must see the similarities. Among the similarities are the fact that the two has the same elements, leaves, roots and also wood stems. But they are different in so many ways. Another category is herbal plants. Banana plant is the examples of the most common mistakes that we make. We refer to this plant as the banana tree while in fact, they are not in the tree category, instead they are one of the largest herbal plant. Herbal plants do not have wooden parts such as the ones in the trees and shrubs.
So, because of the similarity of woody growth, it is easier to determine whether a plant is not a herbal plant and may be categorized to one of the tree or shrub categories. But what about the tree? What is a tree? According to USU, a tree is generally acknowledged as the woody plant with one erect trunk that has the diameter measure of 3 inches and it can grow at least 4,5 feet above the ground. The tree canalso have a definitely formed crown of foliage and can mature to as high as at least 13 feet but without any maximum height measurement.
As for the shrubs, they can be considered to have the opposite characteristics from the tree, beside the wood. Therefore, the shrubs can be considered as a woody plant with more than one perennial stems and these stems may be erect or may be laying close to the soil. As for the height, it has to be less than 13 feed and the stems should be less than three inches in diameter. But of course, there would be a little confusion over the dwarf trees that can only be as high as 4 feet. When we talk about the height, the dwarf tree cannot be considered as a tree, however we also need to take into account the other characteristics and we can be sure that the characteristics are mainly more suitable to the tree category then shrubs.
