/ Maggie Koerth-Baker / 8:19 am Mon Dec 14, 2009

Grinch steals Christmas, rare Asian conifer

rareconifer.jpg

Friendly holiday reminder, people: The local arboretum is NOT your personal Christmas tree chopping ground.

Last Wednesday, somebody entered the University of Washington's Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle and walked out with a rare south Asian conifer, called a Keteleeria, worth more than $10,000. It's genetic material is likely irreplaceable, Arboretum officials said, because it came from a part of China that's seen rapid development and lost much of its native plant life. As the tree was between 7 and 8 ft. tall and 3 in. at the base, officials believe it was chopped down to serve as a Christmas tree. Ironically, it was also a spindly, Charlie Brown-looking thing and wouldn't even be as attractive as the plentiful Douglas Firs usually used for such decoration. Meanwhile, species preservation suffers.

"We feel as if Christmas has been stolen from us," says David Zuckerman, horticulture supervisor for UW Botanic Gardens.

University Press Release

Pictured: The Keteleeria tree in happier times, photographed by the UW Botanic Gardens.

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  1. Some assholes did that to one of my elderly neighbors. Her husband has planted this nice little pine tree with her, one of the last things they did together before he died. One morning a couple of years ago, she looked out the window to see that some jerks had cut it down.

    I still work myself into a fury when thinking about it…

  3. That’s a pretty sad pine tree.

    Obviously out of its natural habitat, unlikely to reproduce, like one of those animals in the circus.

    1. I think the arboretum was hoping to simply keep a rare specimen alive and preserve the gene stock. Reproduction by natural means might be unlikely, but grafts, cuttings, clones etc. aren’t, and might at one point be used to reintroduce it into the wild. Preserving the California condor was a good thing too, although it was done by patently artificial means.

      Anyone who cuts down their Xmas tree by hopping the fence at an arboretum makes the baby Jesus cry.

  4. I can’t say I’m _surprised_, exactly, but… words fail me.

    Evidence once again that half the human race is, by definition, of below-average intelligence.

      1. It’s actually both, if by “intelligence” you mean IQ. IQ is force fit to a bell curve, and an individual’s score is entirely determined by the percentage of people one scores better than on a given test. It’s not like height, where there is a measurable quantity independent of other people.

  5. not to diminish the assholish nature of the harvester, but this is not “the last tree of it’s kind,” and there are a lot of unemployed loggers (and tech bloggers) around here. it has also been unseasonably cold here, maybe the assumptions about the “charlie brown christmas tree” are more about stoking the fireplace, eh?

  8. Some Idoit: “Ooh, we’ll take this tiny one and not one of the good ones. No one will miss it.”

    The Rest of Us: “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

    1. I think you hit the nail on the head. The a$$wipes who did this probably thought that they were committing a lesser evil by taking the scrawniest tree.

  9. Live (well dead, but once living) xmas trees are such a waste. It’s not like most people even do anything with the tree like use it for firewood or make furniture or something after the holiday’s over. If you have to have an xmas tree, get a fake one, you buy it once and you can use it every year for the rest of your life, it’s not as big a fire hazard, and people who are allergic to pine sap/pollen won’t break out in a rash from touching the tree or have breathing difficulty from inhaling the pollen. (I’m allergic, the year my family got a ‘real’ tree was a terrible xmas). Or better yet, get a Festivus pole!

  10. Heh, try leaving for the holidays with an appropriate sized Blue Spruce in your front yard. On a side note, a family rolled themselves down a hillside here this weekend after a tree jaunt. The glaze ice here was something else, staying standing on any flat surface was a chore, impossible if there was any incline.

  12. Nword wrote: “That’s a pretty sad pine tree.”

    That’s a pretty sad observation, it’s not a pine tree.

    Wikipedia says that this tree species can coppice, so maybe it will grow back.

    1. hey anonymous, you said: That’s a pretty sad observation, it’s not a pine tree.

      Wikipedia says it’s a Pinaceae (that pine part might help you there), and on the first page of the Pinacea page it says: The family Pinaceae (pine family)

      SO, you know, I’ll be waiting for my apology, mister anonymous.

  15. Cutting down a tree in an arboretum is on a whole other level of stupid, have they never heard of these things called forests? Missed it for the trees, which would make an odd kind of sense.

  17. I know we had a terrible issue with people cutting the TOPS of larger pine trees to get “christmas” sized trees. I’m use for a similar reason as these morons might have thought, that somehow it was better. But cutting the last 6 feet on a 15 foot tree is still going to kill it. I think eventually the campus put up cameras but I bet it didn’t work.

  20. I’m glad to see this level of dumb-assery posted here, where the perpetrator is most likely to see it.

    So hey cutter! Hi. Have you ditched the tree yet because gee wiz you didn’t think anyone would notice, much less be featured on the news or the popular blogosphere? Oh, and BTW, ordinary trees live in ordinary places, not the Seattle f-ing Arboretum. Woops!

    The world may not ever be able to link your face to your celebrity, but at least you can know this: you’ve awarded yourself the life-long, won’t ever wash off brand of dumbass.

    PS. please consider a vasectoomy or tubal ligation, which I would be happy to pool monies to pay for.

  21. Not sure what’s “common” about a University Arboretum. They are research and education facilities, not commons where people got to harvest stuff.

    Grand theft it certain is.

    On the “positive” side, if the police catch these twerps fast enough AND get the tree back to the UW, researchers *might* be able to get enough live branch cuttings to try to regrow it from cuttings.

    One can hope. With a grand theft charge hanging over their heads, I’m not sure the perps will do the right thing, and unless the police are smart, even if they do catch them, the poor tree will rot in an evidence locker, rather than going back to people to get cuttings.

    1. no, but the entire species of that tree lived somewhere at sometime and was wiped out. A tragedy of the commons. Then this tree gets stolen from a common area. Another tragedy.

      c’mon, work with me a little.

  22. Is there a chance these people knew what they were doing and were just plain stealing a rare tree?

    Is there a market for cuttings from this type of tree?

  23. Ironically, it was also a spindly, Charlie Brown-looking thing

    Consider the possibility that that’s exactly why the dumbass did it.

    As an aside, this happened at the University of Oregon in the 90s. Christmas time, rare tree species, chopped down. I think it was found later in a nasty canal called the Mill Race which runs next to the campus.

  24. For those posting about the tree pictured, from the seattle times, Dec. 9:
    “The park has one other specimen, collected from a different area. But that tree is a kind of ugly duckling, compared to the symmetrical beauty that was felled, Randall Hitchin said.”

    still, wtf?!

  25. It is much more eco-friendly to have a REAL evergreen tree than it is to use an artificial tree. Christmas trees are often grown in soil not suited for anything else, they reduce carbon emissions and clean the air, they provide mulch when recycled and are a renewable resource.

    That said, the idiots who cut this one down deserve to find their home infested with rare Asian spiders that were hiding in the branches of said tree.

  26. That really sucks!

    It reminds me of something that happened in my city the other day. There was a potato crop grown and tended by children in the city’s botanical gardens, with the potatoes destined for the City Mission to feed poor people. The other day the whole crop was dug up and taken. Not surprising really – why would you grow a food crop in a public area? Still sucks though.

  27. This is really sad- yet on another level I kinda chuckle. Earlier this year the Seattle times reported on a rash of landscape plant thefts from front yards, speculation was that the plants were either resold or replanted in the thief’s yard. Either way a really dirtbag thing to do. In this instance however we’re more likely talking about a financially strapped individual (city store bought fresh tree easily 50+ bucks) committing what they probably thought was petty larceny to bring a little Christmas cheer to the home front. Setting aside the terrible fact that the tree was a rare and expensive specimen, this story line could easily be part of goofball comedy a la “Raising Arizona” or “My Name is Earl”, with a family now enjoying their “Christmas” tree and a well meaning (but a bit shady) dad oblivious to his terrible choice of a “free” tree.

  28. When I worked in the nursery at Strybing Botanical Garden in SF, people would jump the fence at night and steal flats of seedlings. It was always something rare like Meconopsis betonicifolia, so we knew that they were pros. It was almost like art theft.

  29. What a douchebag, and he would still be one if the tree was perfectly ordinary- didn’t his mother teach him not to steal? >:(

    Anonymous@ #30: “It is much more eco-friendly to have a REAL evergreen tree than it is to use an artificial tree. Christmas trees are often grown in soil not suited for anything else, they reduce carbon emissions and clean the air, they provide mulch when recycled and are a renewable resource.” SECONDED and quoted because it bears repeating. You have to watch out who you buy the tree from, but real trees are much better than plastic. Proper dealers grow those things just for Christmas, you know, they don’t go stealing them from, say, arboretums.

    1. “It is much more eco-friendly to have a REAL evergreen tree than it is to use an artificial tree.”

      That might be true if the alternative is buying a new artificial tree every couple of years.

      But how would it compare to the artificial tree in our living room, which has been doing its festive duty every year since my parents first bought it in… circa 1975?

  30. Recycling is always ecological, but keep in mind that you’re still responsible for the pollution generated when that tree was produced, and if it ever ends up in a landfill, for its stay there. It’s only one tree, so I think it’s negligible and you’ve made good use for it, but I am definitely no less ecological by buying a fresh tree every year, which, as Anonymous said earlier, cleans the air while it grows, is a renewable resource and is completely natural so it doesn’t take millions of years to decay.

  32. Anon #30 Doesn’t the mulch give off CO2 when it decomposes? ISTM that it would be better for the environment to dump ’em in landfills or the bottom of the great lakes where they wouldn’t decompose would be better from a global warming perspective.

  33. Someone also stole a tree in Uppsala botanical garden, Sweden this weekend. It was a slow growing Picea ajanensis/jezoensis spruce, planted in 1987 from seeds collected in South Korea 1976. There was only a stump left. The academy garden master says to the local paper it is like stealing from a museum. They have cared for it every day and it is like losing a family member. They will now try to find new seeds through their connections with other botanical gardens but there might not be any. I have never heard anything like this happened before, and then I read this.

  34. This happened back in the 70’s when I was at university. Some wanker cut a tree out of the arboretum for a Christmas tree (an Asian conifer of some type as well). Fortunately all the police had to do was follow the tracks in the snow back to the dorm :) I believe the final cost was about $5000.

    And for some reason, this also reminds me of an episode from WKRP. Dr Johnny Fever shows up at Jennifer’s apt with a tree and says ” in the spirit of the season, we’ve killed a tree for you”

  35. This is why people suck. I’ll bet a frat brother somewhere thought swiping a charlie brown tree would be a dandy idea. I hope Santa beings whoever did this coal and a search warrant this year.

  36. There was a piece on NPR recently where an arboretum spokesperson said <10% chance this tree would regrow from the stump, unfortunately.

  38. A few years back there was a proposal to charge admission to this arboretum, wall it off and better manage it. At the time I was as outraged as everyone else, but that’s not looking like such a bad idea any more.

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