A Turkish Fir for Christmas

Here’s a photo of what may have been the very first Turkish Fir Christmas tree placed in a US house. This tree was in my childhood home in 1970 and I remember my father cutting it out of our yard. My father planted four of these trees and for a few years, we cut one each Christmas season. 

He left one which is quite large now. For a while, I collected pollen from it to pollinate other trees.  When we were desperate for seed, we took pollen from it and pollinated a tree in the PV arboretum in Corvallis. These crosses were put in progeny tests and generated some very nice children which have been grafted into various seed orchards. I no longer use it anymore because I have better selections. My family and I call this giant Turkish Fir Bob, after my father.

I think we were one of the first ones to market Turkish Fir Christmas trees. I remember as a young child my father trying to persuade his main retailer to try out Turkish Fir when we finally had a few to sell. He reluctantly took them, but after that, it was an easy sell. That tree lot is still selling our trees after 50 years! We now get reports that our Turkish Fir trees are always the first trees to sell-out on our customer's retail lots. 

Dan Kintigh