Requested information has been added. I can add another screenshot for jungle tree as well. This behavior has been tested on two separate Windows 10 computers and in two separate worlds. Both worlds are old (created originally in 1.15) and used in multiplayer mode.
I have same issue as well, with a large number of similarly placed chests (this fits to the hypothesis about the chunk borders). Half of each double chest has disappeared and an attempt to open the chest crashes the game.
This bug can be closed. The main issue seemed to be other blocks too close to the saplings (such as a flower or a slab). After removing these everything worked again as expected.