Crown-shyness is a phenomenon in which the crowns of trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps.
The idea for the effect is that when multiple objects are overlapped, the effect will deform the objects so a gap is created (with a user-defined width). Alternatively, when a group of objects near to one another are bloated, or the path is offset (to a positive degree), the objects will not overlap but instead leave a gap.
An additional setting could allow the user to decide whether the effect will apply to path overlaps within a single object; so for example, if a cloverleaf shape was offset, the individual leaves would overlap... but with the effect applied, the leaves would expand outward but leave a gap between them.