It's Christmas in less than two weeks' time, and turkeys all over the British Isles are starting to get nervous.
There is rarely any shortage of jokes acknowledging the humble turkey's ultimate sacrifice for our dinner plates. But what of the conifers?
I confess to getting a bit nervous at this time of year, as I'm sure the owners of pet turkeys and chickens do. Will my beloved Wollemia nobilis be nicked by some feckless youths and turned into a Christmas tree? It would look really rubbish - I know because I put baubles on it the year it spent the winter indoors, and the branches are just not rigid enough to take the weight. I have a friend who threatens to hold my Wollemi pine to ransom if I so much as dare decorate the Agave tequilana like I did last year.
So I empathised completely with Randall Hitchin at the University of Washington Botanical Garden, grieving for the theft of a rare tree, Keteleeria evelynia. No doubt the thieves who cut down the tree had no idea of its botanical significance, and apparently it won't even look like a "proper" Christmas tree, on account of its open, sparse branches.
This year my Wollemia is still fleeced up for the winter - not because it isn't hardy (it's been through 18 ice ages!), but to provide some disguise as our garden is overlooked by a public car park and I don't want it catching someone's eye over the next fortnight!
There is rarely any shortage of jokes acknowledging the humble turkey's ultimate sacrifice for our dinner plates. But what of the conifers?
I confess to getting a bit nervous at this time of year, as I'm sure the owners of pet turkeys and chickens do. Will my beloved Wollemia nobilis be nicked by some feckless youths and turned into a Christmas tree? It would look really rubbish - I know because I put baubles on it the year it spent the winter indoors, and the branches are just not rigid enough to take the weight. I have a friend who threatens to hold my Wollemi pine to ransom if I so much as dare decorate the Agave tequilana like I did last year.
So I empathised completely with Randall Hitchin at the University of Washington Botanical Garden, grieving for the theft of a rare tree, Keteleeria evelynia. No doubt the thieves who cut down the tree had no idea of its botanical significance, and apparently it won't even look like a "proper" Christmas tree, on account of its open, sparse branches.
This year my Wollemia is still fleeced up for the winter - not because it isn't hardy (it's been through 18 ice ages!), but to provide some disguise as our garden is overlooked by a public car park and I don't want it catching someone's eye over the next fortnight!
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