Maybe your background draw thread slider is set too high, check under the file menu, options, display, you have 4 sliders one for instant draw, one for background draw, and again a set of 2 sliders for plants. Move the plant background draw towards the left alittle, then load a maple tree and move it around. If it still crashes, move the slider again towards the left, and check if it crashes still. This will set the limitation for plant background draw thread for your machine.
Background draw, btw, is the process of refreshing your viewports, scene and material previews while you are doing something else inside the program, and can be very resource intensive if set too high for your video board's openGL possibilities.