Choosing a Christmas Tree Colorado Blue Spruce and Grand Fir
The Colorado Blue Spruce is a tree it can be difficult to find in the UK, although they were on sale in Harrods last year! Its a tree with a good pyramidal shape and strong limbs that can hold heavy ornaments. It is primarily known for its lovely blue foliage which can appear silvery a point to note is that if your planned decorating scheme does not include blue, the tree can seem dull or even ill!. Colorado blue spruce trees typically reach a height of thirty to sixty feet and spread out to around twenty feet which makes them one of the widest trees, giving a strong triangular silhouette. Their silvery-blue needles are prickly to the touch and aromatic and have a sharp point at the end which means they may not be good for small children to decorate. This needle sharpness gives the species its name pungens, from the Latin word for sharp. Some trees have highly distinctive silvery-white foliage. The cultivated variety 'glauca' is noted for this type of coloration.
The Grand Fir has a glossy dark green colour with needles that are up to one and a half inches long. This tree is soft to the touch and may not be able to hold heavier ornaments but is ideal for children to decorate. While it makes a pretty tree for Christmas, in the wild it grows as high as three hundred feet! It produces a beautiful, thick foliaged tree and is known for its strong fragrance. In most areas, it will produce a marketable tree in eight to ten years. It is easily distinguished from other Pacific Northwest firs by its sprays of lustrous needles in two distinct rows. They are usually horizontally spread so that both the upper and lower sides of the branches are clearly visible and this can be good for decorations that rest on the branches rather than hanging from them.
Blue Spruce photograph by blmurch, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
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