Deciduous indeed! I've thought about some concepts for a reasonably poly and decent looking tree, but it certainly is tricky and finding the resources to test the idea is proving hard. I thought I'd check back here and see whats the crack.
Ideally the sort of tree I'd like to find is similar to tree2.jpg in the 4th reply in this thread.
I'm also about to bump the models thread, so you're going to be in the spotlight again, my friend!
- Dagless