It is quite possible that the tree you will buy for your home this Christmas will come from Canada or the United States. Today, just about all Christmas trees are purpose grown on specialist farms. Year by year, producing Christmas trees has become an important agricultural activity providing work for thousands of workers in Canada and the United States. Your Christmas tree will have taken up to fifteen years to grow, and many hours will have been dedicated to its care and pruning, so hopefully your supplier treats it with the respect that it deserves, and that you also will treat it with loving care and attention once you get it home. Families that grow their own Christmas trees know that a home grown tree is a symbol of the true spirit of Christmas: faith and harmony among all people on earth.

The most popular tree imported into Panama is the pine or Christmas spruce, which comes from cold climates, and is transported here in air-conditioned containers. This keeps them at a specific temperature so they remain dormant and don’t carry on growing. In their natural environment the spruce has the shape of a tall, wide pyramid. Its wood is much prized by the cellulose and paper industries, while its thick, oily sap is used in the manufacture of pharmaceutical products. The spruce does not shed its needles and is a good choice because once decorated, it stays in good condition for a long time.

Young trees have a smooth bark, dotted with nodules full of resin. The small, course cones are elongated, around 4 inches in length and appear in clusters. They stay upright on the branches. The needles are about an inch long with a rounded tip and they are a shiny deep green color. As distinct from the needles of the Northern spruce, the needles of the Christmas spruce are flat and cannot be bent between the fingers.

Until I moved here I had never had a spruce, and I prefer them because they have thicker, stronger branches and can take the weight of heavier decorations. They also last longer, provided that you give them the right amount of water, and they give off a wonderful smell. Trees from Oregon have a sap that is less sticky than the Canadian spruce, as well as a smell that is much longer lasting.

Practical advice on choosing the perfect tree:
Before going to the store to choose your Christmas tree, measure the height of your ceiling and the diameter of the space where you want to put it.

Prepare a container with water in advance to put your tree in. Please make sure that the container is big enough to support the tree and can hold a lot of water. Trees absorb enormous amounts of water and you must not allow the water level to drop below the cut end of the tree, as the resin will seal the cut and the tree will not be able to absorb any more water. The packets of powder that you can get to keep the tree fresh and natural really help it to absorb more water, so make sure that you buy some when you get your tree. You should also buy a bag to put the tree in when you take it down. These bags are hard to find, so if the store doesn’t have them in stock, ask them why not! Pine trees are very expensive to buy in Panama and the stores that sell them should provide a bag with each one that they sell – that would be a really great example of customer service and would make sure that I kept coming back year after year!

Trees that arrive here are almost certainly fresh, so as soon as you choose the one you want, get them to cut it again near the bottom and take it home before the cut seals over again. If you live a long way from the store, you might want to make another cut when you get the tree home.

Place the plastic bag the Christmas tree comes in over your container, make a hole for the trunk and let the tree slide in through the hole, pushing it down firmly. Keep the plastic bag under the tree so you can add more water if necessary, and when you come to remove the tree, you just have to pull the bag up over the tree and dispose of it. If you do this, all the needles stay in the bag and won’t leave a trail to your front door.

So go ahead, decorate your tree and most important of all, enjoy this wonderful Christmas period! Happy Christmas to you from our new home in Panama!

Donna and Tom Dawson, Canada www.icangarden.com and www.whypanama.net

Photos courtesy of Greenland Garden Centre www.greenlandgarden.com/ and Raz Imports Inc.