This is a short animation of a growing curly, kindof cartoonish tree. This was based on a stock image and used for an event logo, I was tasked with making it animated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0BZ6xuXJXg

The tree trunk and roots are all beveled curves.
The trunk 'growing' is accomplished by animating the bevel factor applied to the trunk, limbs, and roots, mixed with shapekeys on the curve bevel objects.
The leaves are placed ahead of time, and animated with a shapekey and scale up from 0.

Modifications:
The speed of the animation could be adjusted fairly easily (select all objects and scale all animation curves).
Existing branches and leaves can be moved or have their shape changed easily.
More branches or leaves can be duplicated and grown with minimal effort.

Created by Hudson Barkley (aka Snu).
This .blend is free for all use, credit is not required.