Unruly Locals Are Outclassed by Noble Out-of-Towners

Consider the conifer. Few plants are more useful. We build our houses from conifers, make pencils and matches. We sap them for turpentine, mill them for paper. But only at Christmas do so many of us succumb to the romance of the scent and symmetry of the conifer.

The name conifer means “cone bearing” and takes in an estimated 550 species of trees and shrubs. But almost more characteristic of the species than the cones they bear are the needles. Essentially linear leaves, their compact form and light, waxy coating prevents moisture loss in scorching heat, and protects the leaves from extreme wind and cold.

No plant type is more resilient in more landscapes, from the desert to the edge of the arctic. Their gummy resin makes them supple enough to slough off accumulating snow, the weight of which would snap the branches of seemingly stronger trees. Perhaps most ingenious are the cones. These slow-maturing wooden flowers that seem to have louvered petals can close tightly to protect seeds from fire, or open to toss the load to the wind.

To most of us, pines, firs and spruces are much the same thing. “Most tree dealers think so,” laughs Michael Barbour, a professor of plant ecology at UC Davis. But they’re not. To distinguish among them, he offers this basic rule of thumb. “The spruces and firs grow on normal soils in more moderate conditions, and pines grow on rocky outcrops or sandy soils that don’t hold much moisture.” In other words, the pines are the tough guys.

For those interested in our local varieties, Barbour recommends “Conifers of California” (Cachuma Press, 1999) by forestry biologist and retired University of Utah professor Ronald Lanner. It’s paperback for a reason. Every hiker should own a copy. In it, Lanner shows us that not only does California have more cone-bearing trees than anywhere else in the United States, it also has the largest type (the sugar pines of the Sierra Nevada forest), the tallest type (the redwoods of the northern coast), and the oldest (a 4,862-year-old bristlecone pine near Mammoth). That’s not just the oldest pine tree, Lanner says, “that’s the oldest verified age for any tree.”

But as superlative as California’s conifers appear to be, the ones native to the southern end of the state, such as Big Cone Spruce, are not used as Christmas trees. Instead, dealers have got the Christmas trade down to pretty much a handful of types: the Noble fir (from Oregon and Washington), Fraser fir (North Carolina), Douglas fir (Northern California) and incense cedar (Northern California). The tree most prized for its color, shape and “needle retention characteristics” is the Noble fir. The hardy local pines, with their unruly branches, just don’t look the part.

Gary Chastagner, a plant pathologist at Washington State University near Seattle, traced the evolution of the Christmas tree industry in the magazine Plant Health Progress. It began in Europe, he found, with the pagan custom of celebrating winter solstice with aromatic evergreen cuttings.

By the Renaissance, Germans were using whole firs, and by the 18th century, German mercenaries fighting for the British in the Revolutionary War were fashioning Christmas trees in the U.S.

Fast forward another 80 years, and Christmas trees were being sold in New York. By 1945, 33 million American households had them. The Christmas tree industry was supposed to grow as fast as the trees could be planted, laments Sam Minturn, executive director of the California Christmas Tree Assn., but the promised post-World War II boom never came, even though the number of American homes with trees doubled to 75 million. The boom came instead for fake trees.

This pains Minturn, a Christmas tree farmer in Hilmar, in the San Joaquin Valley. “Real trees are recyclable,” he protests. “Artificial ones aren’t. They’re made from petrochemicals. Real trees come from America; artificial ones are imported.” Of the real trees used to celebrate Christmas, 95% come from farms.

Minturn says not only do Christmas tree farms take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, they are important refuges for wildlife. “It’s a plus-plus to have a tree farm in your area,” he says. “We have lots of insects, birds. Many of our farms have deer and a lot of the smaller animals--quail, skunks, possums, raccoons, owls.”

His Web site directs Californians to the organization’s nearest “choose and cut” farm. Certainly one such outlet, Lyon’s Christmas Tree Farm on the industrial drag of Washington Boulevard in Pico Rivera, needs all the ecological plus-pluses it can get.

Bud Lyon has been growing a crop of some 6,500 trees here in a strip of land underneath the local utility company’s power lines for more than 30 years.

The climate won’t allow him to grow Douglas firs, but his crew has become expert at pruning Monterey pines and Leyland cypresses into perfect, dense Christmas tree shapes. The value is keen. While a 7-foot Noble fir from the Pacific Northwest will cost from $70 to $150 from a tree lot, one of these topiary Monterey pines runs $44.

If Los Angeles has brought its own traditions to Christmas, one of them may well be the tree auctions by the downtown L.A. rail yards. They started 75 years ago, says Jim Zaferis, co-owner of United Melon, a watermelon wholesaler at 8th and Alameda streets. Trees being delivered to area lots came through here. Somewhere along the way, he says, wholesalers started auctioning them right out of the boxcars. The trees no longer come by train, says Zaferis, but United Melon took to trucking them in 35 years ago. “We needed a winter fill-in for watermelon,” he says.

Zaferis’ company hires professional auctioneers from the cattle markets of the Central Valley to call the bidding. The 6-foot Douglas firs start at $29, 7-foot at $35. Noble firs are sold in a side lot, with a 7-footer going for about $70.

Lot manager Nikki Boyle, a white-water rafting instructor up north, has come south every Christmas for the last 11 years to sell trees for United Melon. “One truck came down from Mt. Shasta, and there was fresh snow still on the trees,” she says. “All the kids on the lot were just stoked. One asked, ‘Can I put some of the snow in a bag and take it?’”

The snow is a good sign. So is a wet tree. It means the tree likely did not get dehydrated. The most important thing for tree buyers to remember, says Chastagner, is to reopen the sap-clogged stump immediately after getting a tree home by re-cutting the stump, and then keeping the tree in plenty of water.

For those shoppers reluctant to kill a tree, most nurseries offer “living” trees, or ones in pots. Deborah Fisk, a professor of conservation biology at UC Davis, applauds this movement but cautions that after spending Christmas in a warm house, evergreens should be moved out of doors slowly. Some types are more suitable for this climate than others.

Many on sale are redwoods, a northern tree that won’t do well here. But nurseries such as OSH are supplying more suitable specimens recommended by the Southern Californian Horticultural Society, including the light green, fast-growing Aleppo pine.

It’s a curious habit, this yearly palaver to observe an ancient German custom. But it gives us a shot at basking in the scent of pines, which could be a conifer’s tactic to ward off herbivores. And while author Lanner has no idea what gives rise to that fragrance, he likes a proposition borrowed from the poet Goethe that he remembers reading in 1959. “It gives sweet peace to men.”

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

* United Mellon Co. Christmas Tree Lot & Auctions, 8th and Alameda, Los Angeles; (213) 627-5061. Open 5-10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

* Lyon’s Christmas Tree Farm, 8301 Washington Blvd., Pico Rivera; (562) 942-9252.

* For a full list of choose-and-cut lots in Southern California, go to the California Christmas Tree Assn. Web site at www.cachristmas.com or call (800) 454-8733.

* For information on recycling trees, call (800) 587-3356.