Is there any way to stop the wholesale slaughter of Christmas tress?

Yes this is a growing concern. Rooted in denial, we cannot afford to leave this issue alone.

Calls, letters, emails and personal visits for Plant Grief are up to 50,000 each year at the Cheer Up Petal program offered by The Royal Horticultural Society.

I’m sure they’d be willing to branch out to other not so well supported regions.

It’s like ww2 all over again. If history keeps repeating itself like this there will be no more trees. Did the sixties not teach us anything? The following week post Xmas is so sad… Their limp, lifeless branches stiffened from lack of water and torn up by the family cat….passed by school children who play with new capitalist toys. It’s a gross form of carelessness and selfishness. Last year my friends and I buried over 200 in one neighborhood alone. My eyes weep just thinking about it.

This issue really needles at me. For the love of conifers everywhere, something should be done.

Genes are concerned with propagation of the species rather than the individual. Since only the lushest-looking trees which preserve their colour and aroma longest (while growing quickly, yet remaining small) are grown in mass numbers as christmas trees, we are providing considerable evolutionary pressure which favours trees which form a symbiotic relationship by providing us with decoration. Modern, farm-grown corn can no longer propagate itself; the kernels are too close together. The close kernels make it advantageous for us to grow it to consume, but it ties corn to us inextricably. Like wolves, horses, cows, pigs, and corn, it appears that the pine tree is hitching its wagon to humanity’s star for good or ill, and that though multitudes may perish, their genome will prosper.

…phew! That’s good to know!

Nice attempt at mocking animal rights activists by equating plants that can not feel pain or have survival instincts, to animals which can.
Says a lot about you.

Pulp them into xmas books for kids & old folks to enjoy.
Kind of a reincarnation for the little buggers.

@ragingloli . . . Tell that to the Lorax.

@ragingloli Plants don’t feel pain? Who says? Plants react to negative stimulus the same way animals do. They just do it much, much slower, and more quietly. In fact, pain is how you “train” a plant, pinching it off where you want the injury to deter the plant from growing in the future. A plant will fight for its life with the same tenacity as any animal. However, because (most) plants draw diffuse energy from the sun and soil rather than consuming other lifeforms for bioconcentrative fuel, their activity level is orders of magnitude smaller than that of animals, so slow that humans can’t see it.

You guys are sappy!

@SmashTheState That is ridiculous. To feel pain an organism must have a nervous system…nerves, neurons, axons, etc. AND a brain to process it all.

@Dutchess_III Plant Memory and Information Retrieval

Some people should ask Santa for a sense of humour to be left under their amputated, lit and decorated Christmas thingie this year.

Sorry @SmashTheState, I’ve studied this subject extensively. There is no communication protocol evident in any plant. The confusion comes from Botanists who mistakenly use terms like “information” and “signal” inappropriately.

Every instance of so called plant memory, information processing, and communication can be traced back to a simple system of switches and triggers which react to sensory stimuli.

For real information processing to occur, including memory, there must be an identifiable coding structure which conforms to Shannon communication protocols and adheres to the formal Purlwitz, Burks, and Waterman definition of code. Non has ever been demonstrated with plants.

Even so called fields of communication can be traced back to simple reaction to stimuli. The wasp saliva causes/effect chemical reaction in root systems which infect the soil and thereby cause/effect chemical reactions in neighboring plants. But no information has been communicated from one plant to another. No wasp alarm was sent. Evolution has simply selected for plants which excrete specific enzymes in reaction to specific stimuli.

There is no information coding system in plants other than the DNA/RNA transcription process within their genetic makeup.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies . . . Tell that to the Lorax.

@Lorax

It’s the same as claiming that a bimetalic coil has a memory. It’s not really memory… It’s just a metaphor. It’s just cause and effect from external stimuli.

Christmas tree farms? I never figured that existed, but I guess it makes sense. I just thought that people and organizations that sell them went looking for suitable trees in forests and chopped them down. Which I never liked the idea of, either.
Whether plants can feel pain or not, I have no idea…it is a concern to me that people still use real trees. If Xmas tree farms exist, I think the energy and work put into those would value the environment greatly if it was spent on replacing trees that were cut down or destroyed in forests. I know that already happens, but probably not nearly enough, so it seems silly to me to have tree farms, where you grow trees just to chop them down. If anything, those farms should exist for things made out of trees that we really need, or at least need more than Christmas trees. Even if that sounds unacceptable to some, at least the products made from the trees would have a better usefulness, and not be wasted and thrown out in a few days.
Why don’t people just use fake trees? They’re just as good, way less of a hassle, and reusable.

Seriously, if trees can’t communicate, how do they create the fractal formations in forests? Something must be helping them get into formation.
And tree farms are no better or worse than growing anything for the use of human beings.

I apologize for making these observations. I much prefer the witty banter at the start of the thread. Thanks for sharing the laugh. I’ll go back in my room now.

@Sunny2 “if trees can’t communicate, how do they create the fractal formations in forests? Something must be helping them get into formation.”

Fractals are produced through the cause/effect process of chaos. They are everywhere. Ice crystals form as fractals, but they don’t communicate either.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I was being a bit facetious. I know what fractals are, but not how they are formed.

Crap. We can’t eat meat, and now we can’t even eat plants. Let them eat sand!

Join the radical free earth movement. Climb a large redwood and live in it for a year. Trees can be saved, one at a time! Julia Butterfly Hill is our hero!

(Can’t I just plant a boat load of trees somewhere, without having to live in one?)

@Dutchess_III . . . You can’t know a tree until you have walked a mile in it’s roots.

That…would hurt I would think!

So does the chainsaw @Dutchess_III. So does the chainsaw.

Yes that mite be a problem.