12/08/09 "IF IT LOOKS LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE...."

A COLD AND RATHER SULLEN MORNING
A MATURE BALSAM FIR TREE

Tuesday, 8:15 AM. 16 degrees, wind W, calm. The channel is calm, the sky darkly overcast and the barometer predicts snow. I have three outside thermometers, on different corners of the house. They never agree and may differ by as much as three degrees. For consistency I always record temperatures from the same thermometer, but it points up the difficult of obtaining consistent data, even in an area as small as 1,000 square feet. The discrepancies may result from different manufactures of equipment, or from sun, wind or other microclimatic factors, but they are real and very difficult if not impossible to rectify. Multiply this one instance by hundreds or perhaps thousands (do we even know that?) of locations over 150 years and one can see that extrapolating accurate temperature data backward in time is a daunting task, to say the least.
There are a number of tall native evergreen species that exist in the wild in the Northland, and with some familiarity one is able to identify them from afar. One species easy to spot (pictured) is the balsam fir, Abies balsamea. It is very narrowly pyramidal, and the top of the tree looks like the perfect Christmas tree for your family room, and the most expensive trees on the lot are often exactly that, the tops of tall balsam firs. Balsam firs on the Christmas tree lot are usually characterized as "double needle" or "single needle" firs. The "double needle" is indeed that, and the double ranked needles are a factor of the amount of sunlight the branches receive. That is why the tops of large trees, which receive the greatest amount of sunlight, are so desirable. Of course open field grown trees may receive enough light to become "double needle" trees as well, and one would prefer I think to harvest the later rather than the former.