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Christmas Botany (part II)- the Best Christmas Tree?

© Wesley Ford

Christmas Botany(part II)- The Best Tree?

"When I was Just a wee little lad, full of pep and joy", my father would take me to the tree lot at the nearby farm market in our South Jersey neighborhood. Down the railroad tracks we would head, cross the highway, and dive into the newly "planted" evergreen forest that had sprung up a few days before where previously was nothing more than brown grass and parking lot gravels. Back in them days Melita's Christmas Tree Lot had a pretty narrow variety of tree types. You choose a balsam fir or you went elsewhere. Balsam Fir was king in them days- straight from the north woods of Maine. Them "trees" were merely the remnants of true trees. They were tree tops salvaged from north woods logging operations and sold to us blissfully ignorant suburbanites.

But what wonderful trees they made. Their Christmasy scent was intoxicating when they were brought into the house. Their flat, layered branches with two toned needles(dark green on top and silvery white below) and open spaces provided just the right space for hanging balls and unbreakable ornaments we made in Sunday School. The stout bottom branches would easily support the 3 or 4 pound bunches of grapes made of seemingly solid glass that my Grandmother had brought back from a trip home to Germany. And the slender upwardly arching top branches were custom made to slip the delicate glass spike ornaments over. And when you plugged in the transformer for the twinkle lights (we were the first family to have twinkle lights) the kaleidoscope of patterns of branches, and needles and balls and spikes on the ceiling seemed to be endless. By golly we had managed to pick the best tree in the lot. and we did it again and again year after year.

But modern times were soon upon us and Melita's began expanded their tree choices to include Scotch Pines. These blue-green stiff branched, stiff needled upstarts seemed most wonderful. They had actually been grown to be Christmas trees and had that perfect Christmas tree shape. They where full and bushy, and we could live with those stickery needles because these trees were so dense you couldn't see through them. The branches were strong enough to support any ornament, just you couldn't "hang" very many in the tree. You had to make or acquire ornaments that looked good hanging "on" the outside of the tree. The glass spike ornaments were left in their boxes and the grapes were hung way up under the tree, outta sight, outta mind. But we loved this new and bold tree with its pungent scent and near perfect shape. At least we never descended to the depths of those families that had "lost the spirit of Christmas" and bought artificial Christmas trees. UGH!