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By Kelly Bahl

Outreach Naturalist

While conifer doesn’t have quite the festive ring to it like Christmas tree does, it plays a huge role both culturally and ecologically!

Conifers are trees that bear cones and needle/scale-like leaves that are typically evergreen, or never lose their leaves. While most conifers are evergreens, not all evergreens are conifers. In fact, some well-known plants like boxwood, laurel, azalea, and holly are all evergreens and are nothing like the festive pines we know and love for the Christmas season.

On the flip side, there is at least one native conifer here in Minnesota that is not an evergreen. The tamarack loses its flat green needles in October with the rest of the deciduous leaves, making itself a weird in-between tree, but still a conifer.

Your live Christmas trees are lumped somewhere within the evergreen conifers. While the modern tradition of Christmas trees dates back to 16th century in Germany, evergreen trees and wreaths have been important symbols to many different cultures around the world including ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. If you turn back the clock even farther these evergreen cone bearing trees have been around since the time of Pangea, around 310 million years ago.

Usually, homes will adorn different types of fir, pines, and spruce to help showcase the Christmas spirit. However, these trees are more than just a pretty face when it comes to their ecological impact.

Conifer trees are extremely vital in the habitats they reside in, Minnesota included. They can provide shelter from predators, heat, cold, wind, rain, and snow. In fact, some full-grown coniferous trees can hold more than two thousand pounds worth of snow on a single tree’s worth of branches.  Cones, needles, branches, and bark can also be utilized as a food source for a variety of wildlife in the area.

These needle-bearing gentle giants have quite the list of superpowers that make them incredible additions to not only your living room for the Christmas season, but amazing to have in any environment.

Thick sap, called resin, serves as a natural deterrent to a lot of pests. Most conifers are adaptable to different changes in precipitation amount, and temperatures. Meaning they can survive warm and dry weather as well as cold and wet. Just like other plants, they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen into our atmosphere. With evergreen conifers though, they are hard at work purifying our air year-round. Truly the gift that keeps on giving.

December at

the Nature Center

Dec. 10: Merry and Bright Night Free Holiday Event, 4-7 p.m.

Dec. 16: American Red Cross Blood Drive: Ruby Rupner Auditorium, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Dec. 24: Interpretive Center Closed, 1-5 p.m.

Dec 25: Interpretive Center Closed

Jan: 1: Interpretive Center Closed