Playing again with trees.
Using Blender 2.79 sapling generator. Model begins as a curve object. (You convert this to mesh for further editing once you have the basic set)
You have many options to build a tree. At first I tried this without instruction, then gave up and watched a tutorial or twenty on YouTube.
One thing that always bothered me was the trunk diameter of the default presets, so of course I explored until I found the setting to change that. With a little adjusting, you can make a decent trunk.
I made tree 99 here in about a half hour, using default leaf hexagonal. Leaf can be masked with texture, but here I just used a power fractal.
This population rendered in 2 minutes at 6MPD and 4AA.
I intend to redo it with larger branch radius later today, just wanted to show that you do not have to have a pencil line trunk.
A long long time ago there was a tree maker free program (like Win95 era) that had this complex branch method, so this is why I sort of "get" Blender's sapling generator.