CHRISTMAS TREES

Evening Star, Issue 21636, 3 February 1934, Page 23

CHRISTMAS TREES

MELBOURNE NURSERYMEN SUFFER SHORTAGE So was the demand tlie fortnight before Christinas for young trees of the pineaeeous variety, which are much in favour at that time of the rear for use as Christmas trees, that

nurserymen of Melbourne found their stocks seriously depleted. “If 1 had 1,000 trees more to-day I could sell them all before Christmas,” said one nurseryman. “ 1 have never bad so many orders before.”

More than 10,000 Christmas trees are sold in Melbourne every year, but the output is not adequate. The difficulty is that they take so long to grow. An abies, which is one of the most favoured species of spruce, owing to the multiplicity and the uniformity ol its branches, requires four to five years to attain a height of six loot, aud ( then it has to be sold for uo more than 15s. Young saplings only six inches high are sold in large numbers in pots at Is each for table decoration at Christmas. Oregon spruce, grown from seed and cuttings, are cultivated by the hundred in nursery gardens at Kew and Box Hill. Norfolk Island pines also are popular as Christmas trees, because they are very similar in. appearance to the artificial trees, made of papier-mache _ and wooden shavings, which are imported from Germany and Japan. When nurserygrown trees are difficult to obtain, resort is had to the ordinary hedge cypress (Cuprcss lambertiana), and symmetrical branches are cut from the pinus insignis. The extensive use made of fir trees in Victoria for hedges and breakwinds, as well as for garden ornaments, accounts for the prevailing shortage of Christmas trees. There is a steady demand for trees for these purposes, witli the result that many fine young pines and spruces having a good pvramidical shape are disposed of before ” the Christmas season approaches.