Something is conscious while it processes inputs and outputs, even if the inputs and outputs are entirely from itself in a closed system; arguably this is what self-awareness is, on a fundamental level.
A tree does that.
The problem is with the word conscious. Most discussions on the subject seem to be saying that something isn't conscious unless it's conscious of its consciousness. Ultimately we judge consciousness on behavior of the organism and determine self awareness based on same. I don't see consciousness and self awareness as binary. There are degrees of both.
It does, and I don't argue that a tree isn't conscious. That's something other people have the unearned hubris to say, but not something I would say because I'm not that foolish or self-important.
If you wish to say something isn't conscious until it is conscious of its consciousness than nothing is completely conscious because no system can perfectly emulate itself as a subset of itself.
As such, self-awareness should be considered separately from consciousness, as an additional capability.
Personally, I see consciousness like I see "truth tables". Its not a question of if some construction has an operant truth, some identifiable mechanism of contingency on preconditions... But just as you say, these operant truths don't reduce to a binary.
You could say, assuming that things were just so, "it's conscious of itself insofar as it is conscious of how much strain is on its branch, expressed in terms of how much of a chemical is sent from the branch to the surrounding phylum and the adjoining region of roots, and the root responds to this awareness by pushing up a chemical that signals different forms of growth at the break, such that the root is aware of strain." You could say "this part of the root is not aware, however, so the consciousness of the strain is local to this section of the root, and other parts of the tree are NOT aware, and so there is no 'awareness' in or of 'the whole tree'"
Again, we don't have the facts in hand to make that statement, but if we had those facts, this is how the statement would, in my mind, flow from those facts.
As a result, consciousness does not 'compare' the way 5 compares to 6, Nor in the way "true" and "false" interact but rather in the way 5x/3=y compares to 1/(1-x)=y,x!=1, wherein you can compare qualities, perhaps quantities given values, but wherein the normal way of saying "more" or "less" doesn't really apply anymore without additional context to the question. If you took the difference of the functions, you would not end up with a value but another function.