Root rot mold threatening traditional Christmas fir trees

Fraser fir. Photo: Bill Cook, Michigan State University, Bugwood.orgBAKERSVILLE, N.C. – Jeff Pollard trudged up the steep slope and stopped at a desiccated, rust-brown tree. Two months earlier, workers had tagged this Fraser fir as ready for market.

It was going to be someone's Christmas tree. And now it was dead.

"Never get paid back for this tree," he said with a shrug. "Eleven years of work — gone."

The culprit: Phytophthora root rot, a water mold that, once in the soil, makes it unfit for production.

Pollard has been growing Fraser fir in these western North Carolina mountains for nearly 40 years. To him, it's "the ultimate tree."

But this persistent problem has him looking to a species from the birthplace of old Saint Nicholas himself for a possible alternative. And he's not alone.

Growers in Oregon, the nation's No. 1 Christmas tree producer, have been experimenting with the Turkish fir for more than 30 years. That species and the Nordmann fir, also native to Eurasia, have shown promising resistance to root rot.

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