Christmas trees from Turkey? Dr. Christmas Trees search for a climate-resilient holiday - Niagara Gazette

Christmas trees from Turkey? Dr. Christmas Trees search for a climate-resilient holiday | Lifestyles | niagara-gazette.com

Washington State University’s Gary Chastagner inspects the tightly packed rows of fir trees that make up his experimental Christmas tree grove.

The moist, dark floor of the grove is covered in red-capped, white-speckled Amanita muscaria mushrooms. The mushrooms surround the firs like so many brightly colored Christmas presents. In fact, these “magic mushrooms” have been heavily implicated in Christmas myths and imagery.

As legend has it, the shamans of the north used to sacramentally ingest the fungi, whose psychoactive compounds are said to have allowed them to fly to the North Star, a yarn that fittingly involves reindeer. This, not Coca-Cola or Saint Nicholas, is the origin of Santa Claus, according to some.

All of this is a reminder that Chastagner’s research is blessed with both Christmas and natural magic.

A plant pathologist, Chastagner, aka “Dr. Christmas Tree,” has spent over four decades dispensing the gift of science to Christmas tree growers in Washington and Oregon, using carefully designed experiments to ward off various attacks from Mother Nature.

However, in recent years, Chastagner’s research has converged on a single nagging problem: how to grow a Christmas tree that’s resilient to climate change.

“Over the last decade but in particular over the last five years, we have seen increased mortality in new Christmas tree planting associated with (the Pacific Northwest’s) hot, dry summers,” says Chastagner.

Large numbers of Christmas trees are also believed to have succumbed to direct heat damage during the 2021 heat dome, though exact numbers aren’t available.

But climate change in the Pacific Northwest isn’t just about hot, dry summers and scorching sun.

Chastagner’s research suggests that intense fall, winter and spring rains coupled with warmer soil temperatures creates opportunities for fungi and related pests far less enchanting and significantly more harmful to the region’s Christmas trees than the festive mushrooms in his grove.

This work on climate will be Chastagner’s final gift to Christmas tree growers.

Now 75, Chastagner is set to retire next year.

Like a paper chain jumbled at the bottom of a stored holiday box, the compound climate threats facing Christmas tree growers in the Pacific Northwest are obviously linked and frustratingly difficult to unravel.

Need for new tree species

Although Christmas trees might look the same when festooned with ornaments and lights, no two species and indeed no two individual trees are genetically identical.

Consider the highly prized North American Christmas tree species: noble fir.

While native to the Pacific Northwest, noble fir is a mid-elevation species that tends to grow above 2,500 feet.

The noble firs Chastagner shows me on my tour of his outdoor labs buck that trend, having been selected for their ability to grow well at lower elevations.

“The reason that people can now consistently grow high-quality noble fir is because of genetic trials,” says Chastagner.

Other tree species on the campus include Fraser fir, an eastern North American tree that does best in the Pacific Northwest when irrigated during the dry summer months.

Still more species are even more exotic.

Since the mid-1990s, Chastagner has been experimenting with Nordmann fir. The tree is native to the Caucasus Mountains in Turkey, Georgia and Russia.

He’s also investigating the related Eurasian species Turkish fir and Trojan fir.

The Nordmann, Turkish and Trojan firs Chastagner shows me come from trips abroad to collect seeds and study genetic traits.

Chal Landgren, professor emeritus for Oregon State University Extension and longtime Chastagner collaborator accompanied him on a seed-collecting trip to Turkey.

“Gary is a consummate researcher,” says Landgren.

The Turkey trip involved collecting cones from “mother trees” that were then GPS-tagged so future research efforts could find them among the jumble of the forest. The seeds were then shipped back to the Pacific Northwest where they were planted.

Over the next 10 years, the trees grown from these seeds were tested by Chastagner and colleagues. Branches of top performing trees were then cut and grafted onto trees in seed orchards around the country, including at an orchard run by Landgren in the Willamette Valley.

“Gary has tested those trees and only the trees that have the best ‘keepability’ are the ones that are to be put into our seed orchards,” says Landgren. (“Keepability” is industry jargon denoting a tree’s ability to stay hydrated and retain its needles following harvest.)

This work is part of the Collaborative Fir Germplasm Evaluation Project (aka the CoFirGE Project), an ongoing effort involving scientists in Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan and elsewhere to locate Christmas trees capable of withstanding future climate change.

The conclusion reached by CoFirGE Project participants: Nordmann, Turkish and Trojan fir could have the climate resilience growers in the Pacific Northwest have been looking for. Research suggests the trees are highly resistant to heat and drought.

“The Turkish, Trojan and Nordmann we have been working with tend to handle the summer heat we’ve been having in Oregon and Washington better than some of our native species,” says Landgren.

Chastagner’s legacy

While annual plants like wildflowers and the many grain crops humans have domesticated come and go, turning to seed at the end of a single season, evergreens do not. They persist.

They are also unique among those long-lived perennials called “trees.”

Evergreens don’t call it quits in the fall like deciduous trees do; they stay green through the coldest, snowiest times of the winter. They represent nature triumphing over seasonal changes in the climate.

It’s this natural magic, this reverence toward the natural world, that I think must have led people to cut down evergreens and bring them into the human-made, controlled climates of their homes.

Whether these trees can now survive the prolonged, uncontrolled anthropogenic climate change of the outdoors is a story that’s only now just beginning.

But with Chastagner’s retirement looming, his part in the story could be ending … maybe.

“We won the lottery when we got Gary interested in our industry,” says Christmas tree grower Betty Malone.

Malone has spent the last 50 years growing Christmas trees north of Corvallis, Ore. She’s known Chastagner for nearly as long and has worked with him on multiple projects.

She’s also unafraid to use the words “climate change,” which she sees as just another reality of being a tree farmer.

She credits Chastagner with helping her understand its impacts on her industry.

“He is one of the most careful, thought-provoking persons. Gary retiring is just a huge loss,” says Malone.

Kristi Scholz-O’Leary also knows the climate threats facing the Christmas tree industry. Once a fulltime lawyer, Scholz-O’Leary now runs Snowshoe Evergreen Inc., her family’s Christmas tree farm in Washington state.

Her family’s trees have seen drought and disease outbreaks, and been helped along the way by Chastagner, who she considers a friend of the family.

“What I say to everyone about Gary is he is a master collaborator. He is the person who brings everyone together to the table for the benefit of the industries he does research for,” says Scholz-O’Leary.

To ensure Chastagner’s work continues Scholz-O’Leary is leading an effort by the Pacific Northwest Christmas Trees Association and Washington State Nursery & Landscape Association to create the Dr. Gary Chastagner Endowed Chair position at WSU.

So far, the endowment has raised $250,000 of the total $1.5 million expected to fund the position, according to Scholz-O’Leary.

She says climate change poses a threat to the Pacific Northwest Christmas tree industry, but it’s not one that tree farmers can’t handle with a little help from science.

“I don’t see [climate change] holding anyone back, because if anything, farmers are resilient,” Scholz-O’Leary said. “We dance with Mother Nature all the time. But you’re going to have to have the science partnered with the grower and the farmer to do that work.”