Ah, but is it a fannish tree? *g* (I ask this coming from SGA, where hey, John Sheppard could be a tree... In fact, there's a J.Flan acting joke in there somewhere. *G*)

I've seen all of these usages--I'm just saying, I think most people don't care if they're consistent (I don't!) in the way editors typically have to. (More annoying, the editor of a multiple essay collection has to make each writer use the same word, otherwise it looks like one of them made a typo.

YES, it makes no real sense--as Andrew Jackson said, "It's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word!"--but there you go.