Palm, pandanus, and lily trees belong to the large group of flowering plants called monocotyledons. These trees grow mainly in warm climates. Of the three types of trees in this group, palms are the most important. There are about 2,500 kinds of palm trees. They range from the coconut palms of tropical islands to the date palms of desert oases. Most palm trees have no branches. The trunk has a crown of enormous leaves. The leaves are either feather-shaped or fan-shaped.

Unlike most palms, pandanus and lily trees have branches. Each branch has a crown of sword-shaped leaves. Most pandanus trees have tall stilt roots that extend into the ground from high on the trunk or branches. Lily trees are closely related to the garden flowers called lilies, and many of the trees have attractive, fragrant flowers.

Fossil trees. About 300 million years ago, there were whole forests of trees unlike most of the trees that grow today. Huge club-moss trees and horsetail trees grew along with tree ferns in steaming hot swamps. Over millions of years, the trees and other plant life in the swamps died, became buried, and turned into coal. In other places, buried forests became petrified (turned into stone). Coal deposits and petrified forests contain fossils of many trees that died out more than 100 million years ago (see FOSSIL). Two of these extinct trees are the club moss tree and horsetail tree of the coal-forming swamps. The club mosses and horsetails living today are herbs.

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