Have an on-going issue where trees that I'm planting are running their course, but when their lifetime is up... they don't go away! They're.... immortal... maybe cosmic even?
Trees on your property will live as long as they aren't poisoned or otherwise compromised, so the life bars are kinda moot. Someone said it has to do with your ability to remove the item without some penalty (ie, if you poison and hack down a tree that has 0% left, you'd then have to restore the patch or remove, whereas if there is a non zero percentage left, you can kill the tree and remove and still have a tendable patch. I'm not 100% sure on the particulars, but I'll take them at face value unless someone corrects me
There's a post somewhere about it from the devs, although I'm not exactly sure where...I would guess it's in their twitter feeds
No, trees will live until their life is over and done with. The life bars are for the patch, not the trees.
The tree will remain, even if the patch is at 0% until their life is over. At that point you will have to restore the patch.
I did have an issue during the test houses though where I couldn't pet/harvest/water them anymore. That's a bug and if you have that you should file a bug report.
Thanks WebWeaver, I pretty much bugged all trees until this point and staff removed them for me and haven't heard anything. Of course, good ol' WoD has worked too. Good to know though! Wonder why tree wouldn't die if the patch was depleted though... extra strong love they get i'm guessing. :)