Hug This Tree: Douglas Fir

With Christmas on the way it seems suitable to find yourself a Douglas Fir to hug; especially, if like me, you live in the Pacific Northwest. In New Mexico you’d see various sorts of trees used for celebrating Christmas — such as we had a Cedar tree two years back. In the Pacific Northwest it’s common to see the Douglas Fir used almost exclusively at Christmas time.

Douglas Fir trees make great Christmas trees because of their beautiful range of green to blue color, great needle retention, soft bushy feel and of course the scent. When you walk into a home that has a Douglas Fir you know it right away. My son says they smell like, “Fresh water and peaches” which I’m not sure I agree with but the sentiment is nice. They do smell amazing.

In Oregon the forests are full of Douglas Fir which is one reason when you drive in from California or Idaho the first thing you see are views like this. This is why I missed the Northwest so much when I was in NM.

If you’d like to spend way too much time looking at photos visit Forrest Croce — as you can see this is where the photo above came from. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone capture how I see places so well. This photographer has seemingly been everywhere I like and taken pictures of it all; Oregon, Washington, San Francisco, and more. Beautiful work. Pages of places shot in amazing ways.

If you’d like to read about the various types of Christmas trees common to different areas then Needlefast Evergreen is a great jumping off point. They discuss various celebration trees such as the Douglas Fir but also trees like the blue spruce, scotch pine, balsam fir, concolor fir, fraser fir, korean fir, white pine and more.

For the littles:

The Mouse and the Douglas-Fir Cone (this one is best if you have a cone with you).

Tree Story: The Life of a Douglas fir Tree — set up like a lesson; good for homeschoolers. This is good for all kids though, personally, I’d ignore the lesson issue and just explore trees using this as a jumping off point.