Stardew Valley - Trees

The wild trees of the valley give wood, hardwood, seeds and, with a tapper, syrup and resin. Each kind grows in its own places.

Overview

These are the trees that give no fruit, and between them they supply almost every building material a farm ever uses. Wood for fences, chests, kegs and everything Robin puts up comes from here, along with sap, the backbone of half the crafting list, and hardwood, the bottleneck on everything expensive. A farm that plans its tree cover well never buys wood from the carpenter, and a farm that clear-cuts in its first Spring spends the next year walking to the forest.

Four of them are ordinary trees that can be planted anywhere: oak, maple, pine and mahogany. Each grows from a seed that the same species drops, needs no watering and no tilled soil, and will stand on a fully paved tile or right up against water. The rest of the branch is made of special cases: a palm that only exists out in the heat, a Mushroom Tree that arrives by accident in autumn, a Mystic Tree earned by mastering foraging, the strange trees that appear for one day of green rain, and a Tea Bush that behaves more like a hedge than a tree.

The two remaining members are the dead ones. A Large Stump needs a copper axe and gives two pieces of hardwood; a Large Log needs a steel axe and gives eight. Those two obstacles are the reason the axe upgrades matter at all, since a young farm gets its hardwood from them and from nowhere else.

Groups

The planted trees divide by what a tapper gets out of them. An oak gives resin every seven days, a maple gives syrup every nine and a pine gives tar every five, and the syrup is the most valuable of the three. A Heavy Tapper roughly halves each of those waits. A mahogany gives nothing but sap, every single day, and no tapper upgrade speeds it up, so mahogany is grown for its timber instead: felling one yields eight to thirteen pieces of hardwood where any other tree yields ordinary wood.

The special trees each do one thing nothing else does. A Mushroom Tree tapped at the right times produces common, red and purple mushrooms, with the purple ones appearing only after a harvest taken on the tenth or twentieth of a month. A Mystic Tree, grown from a recipe that mastering foraging unlocks, gives Mystic Syrup every seven days and helps nearby mushroom logs produce purple mushrooms of their own. A palm drops coconuts when shaken or chopped, and the ones on Ginger Island sometimes drop golden coconuts.

Green rain trees come in three varieties, two of which carry moss. The third carries ferns instead: chopping one gives five fiddlehead ferns plus another from the stump, and a tapper on it produces a fern every couple of days outside Winter. All three drop mossy seeds when shaken, which is how the varieties are kept once the rain has passed.

The Tea Bush sits apart from everything. It takes twenty days to mature, needs no water at any point, stands through Winter outdoors, and then gives a leaf a day across the closing week of Spring, Summer and Fall. Nothing walks through it at any stage, which is why farms use rows of it as fencing.

Order

A first week is spent chopping rather than planting, and the mistake most farms make is chopping everything. Leaving a scattered half of the farm's trees standing means the farm keeps supplying itself, because a mature tree on the farm has a chance each night of planting one of its own seeds within a few tiles.

The copper axe is the first real step into the branch, since it opens the large stumps, and the six stumps in the Secret Woods come back every single day. That one clearing is the difference between hardwood being precious and hardwood being routine. The steel axe follows and opens the large logs, including the one blocking the way into those woods.

Tappers arrive next, as soon as foraging reaches the level that teaches them, and no income in the game is cheaper to set up: forty pieces of wood and two copper bars, then nothing but a walk past every week.

The late additions come from mastery and from the island. Mystic tree seeds are crafted once foraging has been mastered, Mushroom Tree seeds are bought in Qi's walnut room, and the Heavy Tapper that doubles every rate belongs to the same stretch of a run.

Best

For timber, mahogany is the answer and nothing comes close. Every other tree gives wood and a lucky handful of hardwood to a lumberjack; a mahogany gives hardwood outright. The cost is patience, since a Mahogany Seed has a smaller nightly chance of growing than any other and takes the better part of a month unfertilised.

For passive money, a maple grove is the pick. Syrup is the dearest of the three common tapper products, and a wall of maples with heavy tappers on them is a few thousand gold a month for no work at all. Mystic trees beat it per tree once they exist, but they arrive far too late to be a plan.

For a farm that fights or cooks, the Mushroom Tree earns its place, because purple mushrooms are otherwise awkward to get hold of and go into the elixirs that keep a farmer alive in the Skull Cavern.

The Tea Bush is the best value per tile in the whole branch for a farm that wants no maintenance. It asks for nothing, it blocks animals, and its leaves become a drink or a jar of pickles worth half again as much.

Locations

Common trees can be felled, tapped or shaken in Cindersap Forest, the Mountain, the Railroad, the Quarry, the Bus Stop and the Backwoods, and in town east of the river. The trees in town west of the river can only be shaken. Away from the farm a felled tree comes back by itself, as a sapling with a one-in-five nightly chance, once the stump has been cleared and the tile left empty.

The Secret Woods is the branch's single most useful place, because its six large stumps regenerate overnight. A Forest Farm has eight stumps of its own on its western edge that do the same, and a Four Corners Farm has one. Every other Large Stump on a farm is gone for good once removed, and every Large Log is gone for good everywhere.

Palms grow only in the Calico Desert and on Ginger Island, and desert and island trees keep growing through Winter while everything in the valley stops. Mahogany trees and large stumps also appear on the middle floors of The Mines once the challenge shrine has been switched on or the dangerous mine request is running, which is a strange but reliable supply of hardwood.

Prices

Judge a tree by what it produces over a year rather than by the wood in it. Felling a grown tree gives twelve to sixteen pieces of wood, a quarter more with the Forester profession, plus five sap and up to a couple of seeds, and that is the end of it. Tapping the same tree pays every week for as long as the save lasts, and one syrup or resin is worth far more than the handful of wood the tree would have made.

Hardwood is the resource whose market price matters least, because everything a farm wants to build consumes it. Two pieces from a stump and eight from a log sound small until the regenerating stumps are counted, at which point the Secret Woods alone covers a dozen pieces a day.

Strategy

Plant in a checkerboard. Two mature trees will not stand side by side, and a seedling with a grown tree in any of the eight tiles around it never passes its fourth stage, so a grid with one empty tile between trunks is the densest arrangement that actually works.

Use tree fertiliser when the calendar matters. It gives a stage a night, brings a seed to maturity in five days instead of roughly twenty-four, and works through Winter, which is the only way to grow trees in the cold season outside the desert and the island.

Mind the direction a tree falls. A felled tree drops left or right away from the farmer, so standing off-centre when chopping from above or below decides where the wood lands, and a tree beside water can drop its wood into the water and lose it. Standing against a wall solves the same problem indoors.

Harvest moss with any tool rather than the axe. It grows on maples, oaks, pines and two green rain varieties outside Winter, a piece or two a tree, and gathering it knocks the tree back a stage, so a mossy grove needs a few days between visits.

Notes

In Fall, oaks and maples away from Pelican Town and the greenhouse may turn into Green Rain Trees and stay that way until the following Spring. A tapper already on the tree prevents the change, which is a good reason to tap before autumn.

A tapper has to come off before the tree will give up a seed or fall to an axe. The exception is a mossy tree, which answers a scythe or a weapon while the tapper stays in place.

A Mushroom Tree becomes a stump for Winter with its tapper still attached, and a mushroom is waiting on the first morning of Spring. Chopping one down carries a small chance of a wearable Mushroom Cap.

A coconut calls itself the seed of the coconut palm and behaves as food, so palms keep to the desert and the island.

All Trees

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Seed	Tapper
Green Rain Trees	-	-	-
Large Log		-	-
Large Stump		-	-
Mahogany Tree		Mahogany Seed	Sap
Maple Tree		Maple Seed	Maple Syrup
Mushroom Tree		Mushroom Tree Seed	Common Mushroom; Red Mushroom; Purple Mushroom
Mystic Tree		Mystic Tree Seed	Mystic Syrup
Oak Tree		Acorn	Oak Resin
Palm Tree		-	-
Pine Tree		Pine Cone	Pine Tar
Tea Bush		Tea Sapling	-