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• Tree farms are usually monocultures. That is, the same species of tree is planted in rows across a given area, whereas a conventional forest would contain far more diverse tree species.
• Tree farms may include unconventional varieties of trees, including (in a few cases) hybrid trees and genetically modified trees. Since the primary interest in tree farming is producing wood or pulp, the types of trees found in tree farms are those that are best-suited to industrial application. For example, pines are popular because they grow extremely quickly and are good for furniture and lumber.
• Tree farms are always young forests. Typically, trees grown in farms are harvested after 10 to 60 years, rarely up to 120 years. This means that the forests produced by tree farms do not contain the type of growth, soil or wildlife typical of old-growth natural forest ecosystems. Most conspicuous is the absence of decaying dead wood, a very important part of natural forest ecosystems.

Tree farms are planted by state forestry authorities (for example, the Forestry Commission in Britain) and/or the paper and wood industries and other private landowners. Christmas trees are often grown on tree farms as well. In the Kyoto Protocol there are proposals encouraging the planting of tree farms to reduce carbon dioxideCarbon dioxide is an atmospheric gas composed of one carbon and two oxygen atoms. One of the best known of chemical compounds, it is frequently called by its formula: :CO (pronunciation: "see oh two") Carbon dioxide results from the combustion of organic levels (though this idea is being challenged by some groups).

Critics charge that due to the vastly different nature of the ecosystem that develops around tree farms, they are not a fitting substitute for old-growth forests, and the replacement of old-growth trees by tree farms results in the loss of biodiversityBiodiversity or biological diversity is a neologism and a portmanteau word, from bio and diversity. It is the diversity of and in living nature. Diversity, at its heart, implies the number of different kinds of objects, such as species. However, defining. Tree farms may also involve draining wetlandFlorida, USA, with an endangered American Crocodile. In physical geography, a wetland is an environment "at the interface between truly terrestrial ecosystems. and truly aquatic systems. making them different from each yet highly dependent on both" (Mitscs to replace mixed hardwoods that formerly predominated, with pine species.