Perhaps you can't see the Trees for the Forest? 

Try right clicking on game, and running as administrator. Start a new game and see if trees are there. Should only have to start as admin one time. Old save games may still not have trees.

That sorted it!  Thanks Leo - truly appreciate it. 

Welcome, glad to help!

WHAT?...  Why!?

Some people have to run the game as an admin to see the tree's?

What on earth had you stumble on that fix.  Really, I'm curious.

It's been an on again/off again thing. The 1.0 release is actually the first time I experienced it. None of the betas (I was in from the beginning) have done that, for me at least.

Something to do with accessing folders in windows is the cause. Not sure exactly, maybe a dev can clear up exactly what is happening.

I stumbled across it when I was modding some files and discovered that I had to run admin for the game to take notice of the effects... tried it for others with the tree problem and it worked out.