-Caveat Lector-
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/opinion/24PAKE.html?todayshe
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December 24, 2002
A Short History of a Tall Tree
By THOMAS PAKENHAM
LONDON
Those fortunate enough to be in London this Christmas season
should stand under the neo-Classical portico of the National Gallery
and cast their eyes to the south, where they will see something
altogether delightful and unexpected. Below, in Trafalgar Square,
this city's only great civic piazza, two pillars leap toward the
heavens: Nelson's column and London's largest Christmas tree, a
green spire of common spruce 60 feet high, lit with 1,000 bulbs and
crowned with a star.
The tree, botanically known as Norway spruce, is appropriately a
present from the people of Oslo — a tribute in gratitude for the help
Britain gave them in World War II. Similar arboreal compliments are
exchanged between other communities of the world; to the people
of Boston comes a Christmas tree from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in
gratitude for help in a fire in 1917. (In the spirit of civic pride, this
year's tree at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, another Norway
spruce, was donated by a family from New Jersey.)
This is the year to visit Trafalgar Square. For the first time in two
centuries the great space is at peace with itself. The fetid tide of
cars and trucks, sluiced down from Piccadilly Circus, has been
banished to the south and east. So Nelson, the one-eyed adulterer,
can be left to dream of his mistress Emma Hamilton amid the whir
of London pigeons, and one can walk down to salute the Christmas
tree without being knocked down by a bus.
For 150 years this species of evergreen has served as Britain's
symbol of peace at Christmas — ever since Queen Victoria's
German husband, Albert, set the fashion by putting a German-style
Christmas tree in a drawing room at Windsor Palace.
The custom apparently originated in Protestant Germany around the
time of the Reformation, and was associated with Luther, who was
supposed to have looked up one starry night and decided that a star
on the tree would symbolize the star of Bethlehem. Significantly,
America lost its heart to the Christmas tree even earlier than Britain.
Of course the custom was brought to the young republic by less
glamorous German immigrants than Prince Albert.
In fact the name Norway spruce is misleading — outside Trafalgar
Square. The species, Picea abies, is the common spruce of Europe
that extends its dark green empire from the mountains of Western
Norway to the Black Forest of Germany, from the Italian Alps to the
borders of Turkey. In Britain it dominates the Christmas-tree market
(although the American silver firs, like the balsam and the Noble,
are gaining ground because they hold their needles longer).
Millions in England buy a tree to decorate their living rooms at the
double festival of Christmas and New Year's. It may be somewhat
incongruous as a Christian symbol. Luther's star — if it is Luther's
star — is fine. But who ever heard of a spruce in the Holy Land? Yet
the tree suits the New Year to perfection. The deep, mournful green
of its needles represents the passing of the old year, the moment
when primitive man held his breath to see if the sun would ever
return.
Strange to say, this species, the Norway spruce, is now under threat
from conservationists in Britain. In recent years conservation groups
have been buying forests and chopping down by the thousands
trees they denounce as "alien." Unlike a true "native" tree, the
conifer it has no right to be in Britain, they tell us. Native trees are
those that came to Britain after the last ice age ended 12,000 years
ago, crossing from Europe by their own exertions. (There was a land
bridge between Calais and Dover until melting ice raised the level of
the world's oceans.)
These groups set their own rules about which species of trees to
plant and which to cut down. One group has acquired more than
1,000 separate woods covering nearly 50,000 acres on which it can
impose its goal of eradicating the "imposing sea of conifers." The
campaign also includes pressure on the government's forestry
commission to "restore all ancient woods planted with conifers on its
own estate, and to stimulate comprehensive action by other
landowners" in England, Scotland and Wales.
Of course it makes sense to try to ban immigrant trees if they abuse
the hospitality of the host country. The world is full of examples of
invasive weeds that have damaged the environment. In America the
Norway maple, Acer platanoides, has made a thorough nuisance of
itself. New Zealand is tormented by alien British gorse. In South
Africa the crude Australian silver wattle, Acacia dealbata, is torturing
the delicate fynbos plant.
But in Britain the Norway spruce is the most inoffensive of trees.
Generations of the tree have been born and bred in this country,
and have lived cheerfully with the natives. In fact no one knows
when or by whom the tree was introduced. Naturalization should
have earned it a passport by now. Of Britain's favorite trees, many
are naturalized immigrants: the common sycamore, the walnut, both
kinds of chestnut (horse and sweet), the beech in Scotland and
Ireland (it's only a true native in parts of England). Are we to chop
them all down from an idea of political correctness?
Oak and ash, willow and birch are safe. But the ardor of the
conservationists goes beyond evergreens. In their zeal some groups
have even cut down some of the finest examples of beech trees
naturalized in Scotland and Ireland. (Fortunately, they've recently
relented about this part of their fearsome program.)
Under their influence the landscape of Britain is changing. For three
or four centuries the British reveled in the diversity of their man-
made landscapes and welcomed the immigrants who added a
wealth of color and shape to the somber natives.
Most spectacular were the immigrant trees from North America,
which has one of the richest flora in the world. Eighteenth-century
landscape architects imported brash American beauties like tulip
poplars and scarlet oaks, bald cypresses and black walnuts. Stand
on a high hill anywhere in Britain and the tallest conifers you see will
all be American — the grand fir, the Douglas fir, the Sitka spruce,
the coast redwood, the giant sequoia. Now the reign of the
American giants may be doomed. The conservationists have
decided to restore post-glacial purity to our world.
How does this leave our Christmas trees? Is the spruce, the icon of
international friendship, to be treated in Britain as an illegal
immigrant? Our impoverished native flora, the tattered remnants of
the ice ages, offer no alternative at Christmas. Winter presented an
English landscape in the Middle Ages that would seem unbearably
bleak to modern eyes. No conifers, no evergreens — no firs, no
spruce, no pine for peasant or king. Only the prickly holly, the
stunted juniper and the malignant yew (with poisonous leaves and
berries) lurked among the deciduous forests.
True, in the far reaches of the Caledonian Forest of Scotland there
was an elegant native pine, the Scots pine, which had found its own
way back after the last ice age. But Iron Age man nearly
exterminated the species, which eventually retreated to the Scottish
highlands. Today the Scots pine is a mere immigrant in England,
Wales and Ireland.
Anyway, the Scots pine is not considered suitable by the English to
serve as a Christmas tree. It's too lean and spiky. Thus for our
holiday seasons, if not for our forests, we'll have to depend on our
naturalized immigrants and gifts like the great spruce in Trafalgar
Square, and we cannot be denounced for giving asylum to Luther's
star-spangled spruce.
Thomas Pakenham is author, most recently, of ``Remarkable Trees
of the World.''
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company |
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