I have come across a situation where someone is adding points to individual trees.
In non satellite user view it is not too bad as they look like green points. However in edit view it looks very cluttered due to the point symbol.
What might the “good practice” be here?
Should I remove the points or leave them be.
The affected area covers several blocks, but is adjacent to an airport.
Individual trees are valid things to map. If there are trees there, then leave the individual tree nodes.
Removing them because your editor window looks cluttered is not a valid reason to delete data.
I haven’t looked into it but I understand that with JOSM you can tailor the display to only show the types of things you are interested in. You may wish to see if that will work for you.
With trees that are closely-spaced then perhaps the original mapper should have used natural=wood for the area but didn’t know of that tag. If there are large gaps between tress (so you can easily make out individual trees in aerial imagery) then individual trees is a better representation of what is there.
Did the original mapper specify the height of at least some of the trees? In which case they may have deliberately been mapped that way in order to allow pilots to figure out in advance what areas were safe and what were risky. Yes, you should be lined up with the runway to land (with allowances for cross-winds) but if you have to pull up and go around it may be that your only option is (for example) to turn left because ahead and to the right are very tall trees. Depending on where the trees are in relation to the runway, knowing the heights of at least some of them could be vital.
As n76 pointed out:
I would add that n76’s advice is especially true if you don’t need to add anything in the area that has the trees, because if you’re not doing anything in between the trees the clutter isn’t affecting anything (except your sense of propriety). but it’s also true even if you do have to add things (say picnic tables or benches). Unless it’s an actual wood with closely-spaced trees and you’re sure that none of them have been given heights for the benefit of pilots then leave well alone. Even if they haven’t been given heights it’s possible that there are clear gaps between them that might be useful in the event of an aborted landing and that those paths would not be visible if they were replaced by natural=wood.
Even if you think there is good reason to change it, it’s probably a good idea to try to contact the original mapper first.
You can use wireframe view in the editors to see more clearly when editing.
iD: W – toggle wireframe mode.
Josm: Ctrl+W Toggle between wireframe and mappaint mode
Potlatch 2: Map Style tab > Wireframe
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ID/Shortcuts
https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Shortcuts
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potlatch_2/Shortcuts
Thanks for the input. I’ll leave the tree points as is.
As someone said to me, old survey maps included individual trees so this does indeed look like a mapping practice.
What got my attention was the trees specified no height and werent on the approach paths. I’ll just filter the points out when in edit mode.
Perhaps someone is making this a long term project and they are only part way thru.
Area in question: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/-40.32900/175.61790
Perhaps, like me, they added the trees just to make the map pretty and complete.
To me it doesn’t look like somebody emulating old mapping practice of mapping woods as individual trees. There’s a patch of woodland mapped as woodland by the NW/SE portion of McGregor Street with individual trees nearby. He or she has also used tree rows where appropriate. The trees mapped as individual points really are individual trees, or spaced such that mapping them as tree rows or woods is not appropriate.
I don’t see anything wrong with how it’s been done. It’s not the mapper’s fault, it’s the fault of the people who planted all those damned trees. 
The worst you can say it’s been mapped with detail=obsessive.
It looks that way to me. There are plenty of trees inside Terry Crescent yet to map.