You do not find humans made out of stone or clay in nature but that is often the medium used by sculptors to portray them.
Trees and all plants grow in manners that best suits their survival. Trunks zig-zag through shadows to find light, hence the curved and twisted shapes. Trunks and branches are shaped by wind, light, weight of foliage, etc.
I agree that 99% of all tropical trees grow in a predictable manner but these are not the ones I wish to portray, I want to capture the essence of the other 1%. Take Junipers for example, there are many in nature that are really quite boring, I do not want to replicate these, I want to replicate the few that are twisted, scared, bent, and beaten by the elements. We could also think about Larches whose natural growth is straight and narrow, another reason they are called Lodge pole pines. Duplicating this natural growth pattern is boring, instead we bend the trunks, chop for taper, and otherwise shape our Larches to look like a very tiny fraction of those in nature.
Artistic license, if you will.
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