Game Design Shower Thought - trees and setting

A culturally agnostic way to vary settings is trees (with the caveat that some cultures do place cultural emphasis on trees- consider Donar's Oak. The types of trees themselves exist strongly outside of that paradigm as well, however).

Consider the spruce trees of Donkey Kong Country 3, for instance. This /is/ intended to give a geographic vibe: DKC3 is Canada and Northern European-inspired (ostensibly, from hearsay). However, while the games themselves may still be inspired by cultural elements of regions to provide flavour and prevent homogeneity, the adoption of different types of trees is a design element with strong location evocation/differentiation abilities that should mostly avoid running afoul of the wrong side of the cultural appreciation/cultural inspiration/cultural appropriation gradient.

(I say mostly, because /usage/ of trees still could be thorny. Log cabins, for example, while generally fair game as thematic elements, should at least be considered within the context of the historical and present treatment of Native Americans in the US/Canada, particularly if the setting is based on the real world. For a much more extreme example, logging sites are going to provoke a strong reaction in many situations, too.