Lily trees are closely related to the flowers we grow in our gardens and some even have fragrant flowers. They include the yucca trees of Southern United States and Mexico, and the colorful Joshua tree found in the deserts of the Southwestern United States. Cycad trees look much like palm trees with branchless trunks and a crown of feathery leaves but are more closely related to the pines. They also produce seeds in cones that look like large pine cones. Cycads grow in a few warm, moist sections of Africa, Asia, and Central America.
Tree ferns look much like palm trees, but they belong to a different group of plants.
But in mild climates and the tropics, many relatives of these plants have developed into trees. Tree ferns reproduce like their smaller counterparts, by means of spores which develop on the undersides of their fronds. Ginkgo trees existed millions of years ago and covered vast areas of land and were diverse in their species, but only one exists today, the Ginkgo biloba or Maidenhair Tree. The Ginkgo tree, like the needleleaf trees, is a gymnosperm, but with fan-shaped leaves. The Ginkgo gets the name Maidenhair Tree, from the maidenhair fern because its leaves look like the fronds of the fern.