They say Black Friday is starting to turn a bit gray because shoppers have so many more options for spending money and just about all the stores were open on Thanksgiving Day.
Yep, the holiday season is upon us, and that means spending lots of money on stuff — including Christmas trees.
Here is a tree that is a native conifer in the eastern states sometimes used for a Christmas tree and of course, it is a pine.
It is a fairly common tree in the counties of the mountains and piedmont in the Atlantic states, from New Jersey down to northern Georgia and Alabama. (Doesn’t get down to Florida.) It is frequent, too, on high ground in parts of Tennessee, not really getting any farther west.
It tends to grow on hardscrabble, rocky soils, often on clay, the kinds of soils that are often referred to as poor. It is something of a weed, in a sense, in that it rapidly colonizes open fields and disturbed places, and after doing so, may form dense stands. It has been used in reforesting strip-mined areas.
This pine is in fact quite drought-tolerant, and can withstand winter storms rather well. Trees out in the open tend to be relative short and stout, and with a vaguely flattered crown, and no more than 30-40 feet high.
Such trees hang on to their tough, strong branches for many years. The lower branches on such trees tend to sag and droop, often sweeping the ground below. Trees in forest settings are generally taller, though (the biggest one known is about 100 feet high), and they tend to lose the lower branches, leaving jagged stubs.
Whatever its natural setting, most people figure this is a snaggly kind of pine, and not too pretty. The bark, though, is sort of attractive, at least on older, larger trees. It will scale off in thin plates, leaving a kind of multi-toned brown and orange appearance.
The foliage, characteristically, is evergreen, in that the needle-like leaves remain on the tree for more than one growing season. Of course, even evergreen needles will eventually fall off.
Two sharp needles will be bound at the base by a little sheath. The needles are tough and twisted, up to about 2 inches or so — not very long. The seed cones are dark brown and prickly, and of course each scale of the cone can harbor two-winged, helicoptering seeds. These cones also remain on the branches long after the seeds have been shed.
As far as Christmas trees go, there are a number of other species that are clearly more popular, however. The firs instantly come to mind, and there are other pines that are more standardly employed.
I’ve used a red cedar as a Christmas tree a time or two, and it has a certain prickly, winterish charm. But if you are feeling rustic and looking for a tree that can hold those big, shiny ornaments, our mystery plant is the one for you.
John Nelson is the curator of the A. C. Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the Department of Biological Sciences. As a public service, the herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org, call 803-777-8196 or email nelson@sc.edu.
Answer: “Virginia pine,” Pinus virginiana