what kind of tree is the giving tree

The tree in The Giving Tree is generally understood to be an apple tree.

What the book shows

• In the story, the boy eats the tree’s apples and later sells them for money, which clearly indicates it is an apple tree.

• Many retellings and educational summaries explicitly refer to it as “an apple tree and a little boy,” confirming the tree’s species in simple terms.

How readers talk about it

• Discussions of what kind of tree is the Giving Tree in classrooms and kids’ story guides almost always describe it as an apple tree rather than leaving the species ambiguous.

• The focus of the story is the tree’s selfless giving (apples, branches, trunk, stump), so the exact species matters less thematically, but “apple tree” has become the accepted answer.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.