system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When exactly can we say a tree has 'died'?

Even when you chop a tree down it still has a root system, and in some species that root system can support multiple genetic copies of a given 'original' tree. When can the organism that grows into a tree be called 'dead'? If you cut apart the roots between two tree copies have you made two seperate organisms?
gpt
The key part of this question is "what is an individual organism?"  And the truth is that while the idea of individuals works pretty well for things like mammals, which in fact not dividable, for things like clonal trees or coral or whatever the whole idea doesn't quite fit.    So it's better to think about genets and ramets.  A genet is all the genetically identical organisms.  If you've got a tree that spreads by root systems (like Pando, for instance), the whole interconnected whole is a genet, while the individual trunks are ramets.  Colloquially, "tree" usually refers to a ramet, not a genet, so usually you'd say a tree has died if a particular ramet has died (IE, you've got a dead trunk and a bunch of dead leaves on it).