I'm using the Date Palm. It looks great at a distance, but forget closeups. I tried all of the above suggestions, thanks but none of them solved the problem. I think bruno021 is probably right, it's just bad images, poor quality on the tree.

The only solution (other than postwork, which I'm going to try) I think is to just use better quality trees for closeups, and save the native Vue trees for ecosystems. Does anyone know where there are high quality trees available that are suitable for closeup renders?

gillbrooks, how did you tweak the settings on the Coconut Tree?