Trees

Malta in Minecraft replaces Minecraft's trees with 16 Maltese tree species, each grown from its own recipe: trunk, branches, crown, roots and the mix of blocks it is made of. Trees stand where real trees stand, and each place grows the species found there in real life.

How trees are placed

• Field walls: fruit trees grow along the rubble walls and under the retaining walls between terraces, as on real Maltese farmland. They are never planted in the middle of a field.
• Farmland: other trees stand at the real tree crowns traced from aerial photographs.
• Woods, valleys and garrigue: trees follow the real tree cover, mapped from satellite data.
• Species: every tree then takes a species from the mix for its setting (the table below), so a valley looks like a Maltese valley and a pinewood like a pinewood.
• Sizes: each tree is young, mature or old. About a fifth are young; carob, olive, holm oak, Aleppo pine, white poplar and eucalyptus include more old giants, as unharvested carobs and olives in Malta grow very large. Old trees need room: one crowded by a neighbour grows as a mature tree instead.
• Crowns spread only into their own share of the space between trunks, so woods keep gaps between trees instead of forming one closed carpet.

Which trees grow where

Setting	Trees (share of the trees there)
Field walls	Carob 30 %, olive 22 %, almond 18 %, fig 18 %, citrus 7 %, prickly pear 5 %
Trees among fields	Carob 40 %, olive 28 %, lentisk 12 %, almond 10 %, fig 10 %
Olive groves	olive 100 %
Orchards and gardens	citrus 35 %, olive 20 %, fig 20 %, almond 15 %, carob 10 % (and about 1 in 10 is a palm)
Valley gardens	fig 40 %, citrus 30 %, olive 15 %, carob 15 % (and about 1 in 10 is a palm)
Valleys	Carob 40 %, lentisk 20 %, fig 18 %, olive 15 %, Aleppo pine 7 %
Old woodland (Buskett, Wardija)	Aleppo pine 35 %, holm oak 28 %, carob 20 %, olive 10 %, lentisk 7 %
Pinewoods (Miżieb, Foresta 2000)	Aleppo pine 82 %, carob 8 %, lentisk 6 %, olive 4 %
Other woodland	Aleppo pine 40 %, carob 30 %, holm oak 18 %, lentisk 12 %
Garrigue, slopes and valley sides	Carob 40 %, lentisk 30 %, olive 15 %, Aleppo pine 8 %, fig 7 %

By the sea: tamarisk takes over near the coast: three in four trees on shores, beaches, dunes and salt marshes within 80 blocks of the sea, two in five elsewhere within 60 blocks of the sea (not in fields, groves or vineyards), and about a third of valley trees within 300 blocks of the sea.

Trees of particular places (they replace part of the mix above):

• Għargħar, Malta's national tree, only at its real sites: the Ta' Pennellu stand in Wied il-Miżieb (about two thirds of the trees there) and a few single trees.
• White poplar, white willow and narrow-leaved ash in the riverside woods of Chadwick Lakes and Wied il-Luq: willow at the water's edge, white poplar and ash on the valley floor. Willow also grows by ponds in other valleys.
• Eucalyptus at Ta' Qali.

The 16 species

Tree	Maltese	Where it grows
Carob	Is-siġra tal-ħarrub	field walls, fields, valleys, garrigue, woods: the commonest tree
Olive	Is-siġra taż-żebbuġ	olive groves, field walls, fields, gardens
Almond	Is-siġra tal-lewż	field walls, fields, gardens
Fig	Is-siġra tat-tin	valley gardens, field walls, valleys
Aleppo pine	Is-siġra taż-żnuber	pinewoods and old woodland
Holm oak	Is-siġra tal-ballut	old woodland (Buskett, Wardija)
Tamarisk	il-bruka	the coast and valley mouths
Citrus / pomegranate		orchards, valley gardens, field walls
Lentisk	id-deru	garrigue, valleys, woods
Prickly pear	il-bajtar tax-xewk	field walls
Għargħar	l-għargħar	its real sites only
Palm		gardens
White poplar	il-luq	Chadwick Lakes, Wied il-Luq
White willow	iż-żafżafa	riverside woods, valley ponds
Narrow-leaved ash	il-fraxxnu	riverside woods
Eucalyptus		Ta' Qali