Christmas tree. Photo Credit: images.clipartpanda.com

While there are many stunning artificial Christmas trees on the market there is nothing that can beat a real Christmas tree.  The species of tree for the festive holiday varies in different parts of the world, they all have roughly the same green foliage and smell.  When it comes to getting a tree to decorate for the holidays you’re faced with one problem regardless of the species you go for in that the leaves or needles will turn brown and fall off.  A group of schoolgirls in Australia have now come up with a simple solution to make the Christmas tree last longer in the home.

A year 7 class of girls from a school in Rose Bay, Sydney, Australia, looked into what made the foliage of the typical Christmas tree turn brown and shed the needles.  They looked at the trees in different conditions.  They placed branches into tap water, hot water, beer, energy drinks and a container that had water with the branch being sprayed with hairspray.  They performed the experiment with 50 branches of Pinus Radiata, otherwise known as the Monterey Pine tree.  They divided the branches into groups of 10 and checked the branches out carefully over a period of 27 days.  They used an instrument to measure the leaves health by applying a pulse of light.  This measured how efficiently the needles converted light energy to chemical energy.

Professor Moles said that she believed that the coating of the hairspray stopped the plant from being able to sense chemicals that came from the branches that were dying, which in turn would normally trigger more decay.  This works in the same way as leaving a rotten apple in a bowl and it turning the whole bowl bad.  Another theory was that the hair spray may have helped to keep moisture in.  So it seems that if you want to get the best from your Christmas tree you should give the tree a spray with some hairspray.  Of course, it would be advisable to do this before you decorated the tree.

This may be a tad bit late considering the timing.  I know I will make sure to remember this next year!