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Alive & KickingThe Christmas Tree |
As a nine-year-old, it was to be my willing task to secure a Christmas tree. Our newly purchased property was loaded with evergreens and even a large holly tree, which each Christmas season had clusters of bright red berries.
Try as I would to locate a suitable tree, however, I learned at a young age that young Douglas Fir trees do not grow in the shade of more mature trees.
Consequently, we had a cedar Christmas tree that year.
The tree was full and easy to hide behind and I must admit I spoiled all my present surprises by peeking—my curiosity won out! I was getting Lincoln Logs! (There was no such thing as scotch tape in 1943, just stickers that didn’t stick very well, and they were no challenge at all.)
The following year I tried a young hemlock tree, which was a bad choice because three days of warm house temperature caused all the needles to fall off.
Being somewhat resourceful, the third year I learned how to take a less-than-acceptable tree, drill holes in the vacant spots and add limbs borrowed from a donor tree. Voilà, an excellent graft ed-hybrid Christmas tree.
We six siblings were in charge of decorations. These consisted of paper chains, old-fashioned colored lights, strung popcorn and narrow strips of foil called “rain,” which made the tree shimmer. We thought it was more than satisfactory: it was beautiful.
Years later, as a newlywed, my wife and I brought home a monstrous tree that we had cut with permit on government land. We learned that trees always look smaller in the great outdoors. Part of that tree made it inside the house, covering most of a 12-foot wall. Another year we topped a 30-foot spruce in the dark (we had started looking in daylight). Living trees were great; a white fir that we planted aft er Christmas in the 1960s grew to a trunk diameter of eighteen inches after fortysome years. We had many years of flocked trees, too.
This year, however, a great change has come. In our living room sits a beautifully decorated artifi cial tree. We fought the idea for years, for we favor natural trees. Maybe it’s old age creeping up, but the lights went on so easily as I simply plugged the cord into the outlet. Through the ornaments, crystal fobs, bows and lights, you can hardly see the tree. Maybe the change won’t be so bad after all.
But trees do so much more than serve to decorate our homes for the holidays.
These living, beautiful evergreen trees are uniquely clever and useful. Each mature tree produces millions of needles, which are so efficient in absorbing all possible light that almost nothing grows beneath them.
Conifers—for example, fir, spruce, hemlock, cedar, and pine—belong to a large group called Gymnosperms, which means “the naked seed plant.”
Their seeds are borne on scales without a fruit covering. Typically, the ova are wind-pollinated; each pollen grain has microscopic wings to aid its distribution.
The wind, also, dries the cones, which releases the small winged seeds for their flight across the landscape.
Those seeds are produced in abundance. Most are consumed by birds and rodents (think squirrels!), but in an established forest few seeds are needed to maintain the tree population whose longevity is hundreds of years.
When fire or logging clears the forests, rodent populations are reduced, and abundant seeds are available to reseed the slopes, making competition fierce between the forest tree seedlings and other plants.
Replanting seedling trees, however, promotes the trees’ success over brush and shrubs, because the seedlings get a head start in that quiet competition for light.
So when you hear “Silent Night” during the Twelve Days of Christmas, remind yourself to turn down the music, walk outside and listen—you may see the pines pointing toward the heavens, sighing their distinctive carols with the wind.
Guest columnist John Cooke taught high school biology for 30 years and is pleased to share his insights with our readers.