Flora Columnist
As we reflect on the joys of the season, take time out to ponder the specialness of that tree you brought indoors to accompany your family traditions.
Most likely that special tree is a North Carolina Fraser fir, Abies fraseri, purchased from a temporary tree lot.
The former magnificent North Carolina high altitude evergreen Fraser fir forests, described as “Christmas Tree Land†by B.W. Wells in The Natural Gardens of North Carolina, are now much diminished by an exotic insect pest, the balsam wooly adelgid. I remember being awed back in 1967 by the blue-green Fraser fir forests along the Blue Ridge Parkway’s highest elevations. Those ridge-tops today are graveyards of dead stems of the formerly magnificent firs.
Today we see Fraser firs mostly as crops on Christmas tree farms in our mountain counties. Though helping the economy of the region, those farms don’t replace the biodiversity of the former Fraser fir forests. Unfortunately, much of the Christmas tree production depends upon heavy pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer applications with resulting toxic runoff. A bright side is that some farms are now moving toward non-toxic organic operations
With the holidays past, those trees are sadly discarded along curbsides. Please don’t let this happen in your neighborhood. Though we are fortunate to have curbside pickup for landfill composting, our special tree deserves better treatment. Honor that tree by continuing its usefulness on your home turf.
Sited upright near bird feeders, it becomes excellent shelter and perches for birds. It also provides an additional evergreen element in your landscape for several more months. When it finally turns brown, cut it into pieces for your compost bin or apply cut branches as mulch at the base of trees and shrubs. There is no sense discarding them curbside, making more work for public works crews.
Until some other creative homeowner is nominated, Chapel Hill resident Diana Steele once again receives the annual “Citizen Award for Creative Orphaned Christmas Tree Recycling.â€
For years, Diana has inspired curbside rescuing of discarded trees to be dropped along the driveway of her Willow Hill Preschool at 1207 Mason Farm Road. Propped up along the edges of her parking spots, these trees provide instant dramatic landscape effect. For weeks the kids in her preschool drag them around, and with creative energies, like budding architects, make tree fortresses, tree castles and even giant bird nests to explore for weeks on end.
Under Diana’s supervision, the trees eventually settle into natural recycling as meandering brush-pile wildlife habitats along the woodland edges of her magical gardens and preschoolers’ discovery ground.
Every time I spot one of the orphaned trees at curbside, I rescue it. A few go to my yard, but most will find a happy home at Willow Hill Preschool. It’s a great celebration when the kids are there at drop-off time.
I hope you honor your tree this year by keeping it on your home turf, or at least on a neighborhood site where the kids may enjoy it on its way to a natural return to the soil.
Email Ken Moore at flora@carrborocitizen.com. Find previous Ken Moore Citizen columns at The Annotated Flora.
Thank you, Ken, for your suggestions on how to use our special tree after the Holidays. As a tree hugger, I feel strange dragging a cut tree into the house around Christmas, but since they’ve already been cut, I feel obligated to get the “Charlie Browniest” tree that no one else will take and brighten it up for a few weeks. Now I know how to keep it with us even longer. Thank you again.