the difference between low poly (for aesthetics) and low poly (hardware limitations) can be pretty funny at times but trees are definitely one of the biggest differences
like the modern low poly aesthetic will use a whole ton of polygons making a simple looking cone shaped tree giving it a kids toy kind of look or do something along the style of Tunic's trees, games made for ~90s hardware will use a very small simple model for the trunk, maybe, and the rest of or the whole tree will just be sprites, because you can make a tree with at absolute minimum one rectangle that way if you can hide it well enough or that was what you got in that era
random examples: Sled Storm on the PS1 and RE4 on GC
