What Shape Are Trees?

Now that most of the leaves are off the deciduous trees in Mud Lake, we took some time to check out some of the trees to prepare for our landscape paintings. Here's what we discovered:

• larger branches are at the bottom of the tree, and smaller branches are at the top
• almost all of the new growth goes up, not straight out or down
• trees that grow out over the water are lopsided (they have lots more growth on the water side)

The question that needs to be answered for each of the statements above is "Why?".

What do you think?