Exhausted Friends Slowly Realize They Were Playing Board Game Wrong Entire 6 Hours

Was gifted a copy of Canopy a few months back. Played through the first game before we realized that there weren't any "middle" tree trunk cards (there are only tree bases and canopies, and you're supposed to overlap the base cards to make your trees taller).

Then, I promptly forgot all about it until nearly the end of the second game. Damned jungle.