Transcript
Oregon is the number 1 producer of Christmas trees in the US,
and we produce about 4 and 1/2 million trees.
So our biggest consuming state is California.
A lot of trees get shipped to California.
Our biggest export destination is Mexico.
My name is Chal Landgren.
I'm the Oregon State University extension Christmas tree
specialist.
And I've been working as a Christmas tree
specialist for about 11 years, and I've been with OSU
for almost 41 years.
Oregon is a great place to grow Christmas trees
as it is for many other crops.
Most of the Christmas trees are produced in the Lamar Valley,
and often in the foothills, like, of Silverton, and around
through Salem, and down to Eugene.
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Some of the traits that we're looking for in selecting trees
for inclusion in the orchard, or in your home, lots of branches.
And lots of branches means lots of buds in the leader.
We're also looking for trees that have an upright growth
habit and dark green color.
All of these trees have also been tested for keepability.
Essentially, that means how quickly the needles fall off
at Christmas.
So this root stock is probably seven years old,
but the graft is from a tree that was over 100 years old.
So the graft maintains that age.
It thinks it's an older tree than it
is from the grafted root stock.
The advantage of that for us in breeding trees
is that the older tree material will produce cones faster
than a young tree.
And we get the exact replica of the tree
that we're trying to get seed from.
The purpose of these orchards will be to,
eventually, get seed to plant new seedlings
for future Christmas trees.
So we've been doing progeny testing of seedlings from trees
all over the world.
And what we have grafted in here are the best
of the best of those progeny.
And as these trees grow up, we're
going to produce seed that will be used for the next crops--
for future crops of Christmas trees.
Oregon produces over 4.5 million Christmas trees. Retired Extension specialist, Chal Landgren, researched Christmas trees in the Willamette Valley at the North Willamette Research and Extension Center for decades. The goal isn’t to create picture-perfect Christmas trees. These trees are grown for breeding and cultural practices that benefit the Christmas tree industry. Full story in OSU's Progress magazine.
Want to learn more about this topic? Explore more resources from OSU Extension:
Nursery and greenhouse, Christmas trees
