White Spruce

#1 White Spruce

This tree is considered the original Christmas tree for most of the prairie provinces. It has pockets of grwoth and popularity all the way to the east coast. Families who venture off into the woods in search of a Christmas tree in these regions would in all likelihood come home with a nice conical-shaped tree which one can readily see through. This lets large decorations to hang and be placed deep into the tree.

As a Christmas tree the white spruce foliage can range from dark to paler green to olive green. It has short and stiff needles up to one-inch in length, with sometimes sharp but rounded tips. In the wild the white spruce is an attractive tree but narrower tree. It has better needle retention than some spruce species, however they are amongst the shortest-lived of Christmas trees.

In the commercial forest sector, the white spruce is the backbone of many of Canada's regional dimensional lumber industries. In the parkland and boreal forest it was the #1 tree in the pulp and paper industry for decades until technological advances rendered Trembling Aspen and Balsam Poplar desireable species as well. As a side note, it apears that hybrid Poplar plantations could soon become an alternative crop on the prairies. Considering their proximity to pulp and paper mills and OSB (oriented strandboard) plants, this agroforestry crop could compete with traditional grain and oilseed crops.