News
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Numerous websites report that decorating evergreen trees in the winter started in Latvia and Estonia in the 15th century. Previously, the Druids, pagan priests of the woods, used evergreen trees for their mysterious winter solstice rituals but when the 16th century rolled around, evergreens decorated with apples, dates, nuts and other goodies had become a German tradition.
During the Revolutionary War Hessian soldiers are thought to have brought the tradition of the Christmas tree across the Atlantic to our shores. Or maybe the tradition was carried across the ocean in the hearts and minds of German immigrants. Regardless of how the tradition started, the first record of evergreen trees being sold in the U.S. for use as Christmas trees was in New York in 1851.
By 1900, 20 percent of Americans had Christmas trees in their homes. In 1901 the first Christmas tree farm was established near Trenton, N.J., when 25,000 Norway spruce were planted specifically for this purpose. This year, according to Bloomberg News, Americans will spend about $800 million for 25 million real trees and $2.6 billion on 10 million artificial trees. Approximately 85 percent of the fake trees are produced in China while all the real trees are grown in North America.
TREE FARMS
Tree farms can be huge with one of Lowe's suppliers, Bottomley Evergreens & Farms Inc. in Ennice, N.C., which has six million trees in the ground, and 400,000 to be sold this year. Noble Mountain Tree Farm in Salem, Ore., shipped 500,000 trees for this holiday season. If you figure a 53-foot semi-trailer can haul 550 to 700 trees, it takes from 1,285 to 1,636 semis to get the trees from these two farms to market. That's not counting the shipping requirements of 20,000 other Christmas tree farms throughout the nation.
You can find Christmas tree plantations in every state of the union catering to their shearing, fertilizing, watering and pest control needs. Oregon is the highest producing state with close to 68,000 thousand acres. With two thousand trees per acre that means Oregon has a minimum of 136 million trees ready for harvest. In 2002, 450,000 acres of land in the U.S. was in Christmas tree production. Oregon's 2009 figures, the most recent on Oregon's Department of Ag website, report the value of Christmas trees shipped out of their state exceeded $17,700,000.
D.C. TREES
In 1856 Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the U.S. and a Democrat, is rumored to have placed a Christmas tree in the White House; yet according to the official version at the White House website President Benjamin Harrison, Republican, was credited for having the first indoor tree. The decision to give Harrison the credit was made during the presidency of G.W. Bush, Republican. This year's official White House Christmas tree for the blue room is a 19-foot-tall balsam fir grown by Sue and Tom Schroeder on their farm near Neshkoro, Wis.
In 1923, President Coolidge is reported as starting the tradition of the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the Ellipse in President's Park near the White House. Eighty-eight years ago 2,500 electric lights illuminated the tree when President Coolidge flipped the switch. This year, thousands of GE Color Effects ® programmable, color-changing GE LED lights are being used for the National Christmas tree.
The tree installed as our U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree is a 118-year-old Sierra White Fir (Abies lowiana) from Stanislaus National Forest in Central California. At a height of 63 feet at harvest, it is covered with 5,000 ornaments and 10,000 LED lights.
Many of the trees you and I buy to decorate our homes are cut in the first few weeks of November and hauled to markets in distant states. Pre-orders for trees from most tree farms need to be filed by mid-October. If the tree you select was cut in the Pacific Northwest it might have been hauled out of the field by helicopter, packed in a refrigerated truck and moved to your local Christmas tree lot. It might even have been wrapped in a plastic net like the Balsam fir my mother mailed my family from New Hampshire years ago.
If you purchased a locally produced tree it might have come from a tree farm or out of the wild. Pinon pines are our most common wild trees with Austrian and Scotch pines the most common evergreens grown in local tree farms. You might also have purchased a potted or a B&B tree from a local nursery or tree farm with the intention of planting it in the spring.
The use of wreaths supposedly originated in ancient Rome as symbols of victory where they were hung on doors. Today, they are used to wrap banisters, hand rails, and mantels for those of you who still have fireplaces. In addition to pine, fir, and spruce being used in wreaths, heather, lavender and other fragrant herbs are often added to spice up these decorations.
No matter what you use to decorate your home and office this season, I wish you all the best for the coming year.
----------------------
Dr. Curtis E. Swift is the area horticulture agent with the CSU Extension. Reach him at Curt.Swift@mesacounty.us, visit WesternSlopeGardening.org, or check out his blog at http://SwiftsGardeningBlog.blogspot.com.
During the Revolutionary War Hessian soldiers are thought to have brought the tradition of the Christmas tree across the Atlantic to our shores. Or maybe the tradition was carried across the ocean in the hearts and minds of German immigrants. Regardless of how the tradition started, the first record of evergreen trees being sold in the U.S. for use as Christmas trees was in New York in 1851.
By 1900, 20 percent of Americans had Christmas trees in their homes. In 1901 the first Christmas tree farm was established near Trenton, N.J., when 25,000 Norway spruce were planted specifically for this purpose. This year, according to Bloomberg News, Americans will spend about $800 million for 25 million real trees and $2.6 billion on 10 million artificial trees. Approximately 85 percent of the fake trees are produced in China while all the real trees are grown in North America.
TREE FARMS
Tree farms can be huge with one of Lowe's suppliers, Bottomley Evergreens & Farms Inc. in Ennice, N.C., which has six million trees in the ground, and 400,000 to be sold this year. Noble Mountain Tree Farm in Salem, Ore., shipped 500,000 trees for this holiday season. If you figure a 53-foot semi-trailer can haul 550 to 700 trees, it takes from 1,285 to 1,636 semis to get the trees from these two farms to market. That's not counting the shipping requirements of 20,000 other Christmas tree farms throughout the nation.
You can find Christmas tree plantations in every state of the union catering to their shearing, fertilizing, watering and pest control needs. Oregon is the highest producing state with close to 68,000 thousand acres. With two thousand trees per acre that means Oregon has a minimum of 136 million trees ready for harvest. In 2002, 450,000 acres of land in the U.S. was in Christmas tree production. Oregon's 2009 figures, the most recent on Oregon's Department of Ag website, report the value of Christmas trees shipped out of their state exceeded $17,700,000.
D.C. TREES
In 1856 Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the U.S. and a Democrat, is rumored to have placed a Christmas tree in the White House; yet according to the official version at the White House website President Benjamin Harrison, Republican, was credited for having the first indoor tree. The decision to give Harrison the credit was made during the presidency of G.W. Bush, Republican. This year's official White House Christmas tree for the blue room is a 19-foot-tall balsam fir grown by Sue and Tom Schroeder on their farm near Neshkoro, Wis.
In 1923, President Coolidge is reported as starting the tradition of the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the Ellipse in President's Park near the White House. Eighty-eight years ago 2,500 electric lights illuminated the tree when President Coolidge flipped the switch. This year, thousands of GE Color Effects ® programmable, color-changing GE LED lights are being used for the National Christmas tree.
The tree installed as our U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree is a 118-year-old Sierra White Fir (Abies lowiana) from Stanislaus National Forest in Central California. At a height of 63 feet at harvest, it is covered with 5,000 ornaments and 10,000 LED lights.
Many of the trees you and I buy to decorate our homes are cut in the first few weeks of November and hauled to markets in distant states. Pre-orders for trees from most tree farms need to be filed by mid-October. If the tree you select was cut in the Pacific Northwest it might have been hauled out of the field by helicopter, packed in a refrigerated truck and moved to your local Christmas tree lot. It might even have been wrapped in a plastic net like the Balsam fir my mother mailed my family from New Hampshire years ago.
If you purchased a locally produced tree it might have come from a tree farm or out of the wild. Pinon pines are our most common wild trees with Austrian and Scotch pines the most common evergreens grown in local tree farms. You might also have purchased a potted or a B&B tree from a local nursery or tree farm with the intention of planting it in the spring.
The use of wreaths supposedly originated in ancient Rome as symbols of victory where they were hung on doors. Today, they are used to wrap banisters, hand rails, and mantels for those of you who still have fireplaces. In addition to pine, fir, and spruce being used in wreaths, heather, lavender and other fragrant herbs are often added to spice up these decorations.
No matter what you use to decorate your home and office this season, I wish you all the best for the coming year.
----------------------
Dr. Curtis E. Swift is the area horticulture agent with the CSU Extension. Reach him at Curt.Swift@mesacounty.us, visit WesternSlopeGardening.org, or check out his blog at http://SwiftsGardeningBlog.blogspot.com.
