It is hard to look at this picture and think: weed. Yet, Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is by far the greatest number of tree seedlings I pull during my days of gardening. It is a pioneer species, meaning it colonizes open ground. Arthur Kruckeberg in his classic “Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest” says Doug firs are “so common and so successfully self-perpetuating… that scarcely anyone thinks of propagating it intentionally for ornamental use”. He goes on to describe it virtues for two more pages. Though any of you who have gardened with, I mean under, them know the pitfalls. They rob the soil of moisture drop needles perpetually, and are brittle, dropping twiglets in a breeze and giant limbs in a gale. A global tree census in 2015 numbered 422 living trees per person on the planet. In the Pacific Northwest I bet a vast proportion of those trees are Doug-firs.

By shear ubiquity, they are nearly invisible, a dark backdrop to our busy Northwest lives.

Some people drag home every little puppy or kitten they find. My heart softens for tree seedlings. I gently pry them from the ground and pot them up for planting elsewhere in the future. My raggle-taggle nursery of misshapen trees is a testament to this bad habit. Kruckeberg recommends collecting seedling as the best way to propagate Doug-fir, though I doubt many of you will rush out to dig them for your garden. The many dwarf and variegated cultivars, he rued, are only available in Europe.

As I drove around looking for photogenic Doug-firs for this post, it became increasingly evident to me how extrememly ubiquitous they are, and how spontaneous.
Our local variety is called Coast Doug-fir (P. menziesii var menziesii) and can grow well over 300 feet and live for 500 to 1000 years. Arthur Lee Jacobsen writes, “Seattle owed its early economic health to this tree”. It is still the most widely grown timber tree in the U.S. And ranks high globally.

These forest giants have been planted, and have naturalized, in Europe, Chile, and New Zealand. In the latter they have become an invasive species. I walked through forests of Doug fir on the Island of Elba in Italy, which were part of a post WWII reforestation project, they now dominate the northern flanks Monte Capanne on the western end of the island.
According to Google “Doug fir exhibits considerable morphological plasticity”, which explains its ability to adapt to so many climates. —I saw a small plantation at higher altitudes on the Big Island of Hawaii a few years ago. —Back home the highest concentration is along the west side of the Cascades throughout Washington and Oregon. One of its common names is Oregon pine (I will not go into the lengthy history of its common and scientific names here). There are two inland varieties the Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir (P. menziesii var. glauca), which can be found as far south as central Arizona. —I saw small, contorted ones on the rim of the Grand Canyon.— There is also a Mexican species (P. lindleyana) thought by some to be a variety of P. menziesii. The big-cone Douglas-fir (P. macrocarpa) is another North American species of very limited range in southern California.

There are also two species in eastern Asia P. japonica and P. sinensis (further broken down into three varieties, which are often listed as separate species). None are true firs (genus Abies), the most telling feature being the pendulous cones. All Pseudotsugas have persistent tridentate bracts protruding from the cone scales. The Northwest Coastal Peoples though of these bracts as the back end of a mouse, which was given protection by this generous tree. They used the wood for fire and the making of many implements, but rarely for building. The pitch served as glue, and also a dressing for wounds. Early Hawaiians dug prized canoes from logs that washed up on their shores.

“Though the general habit of the tree is not what gardeners would call weeping,’ writes Donald Culross Peattie in “A Natural History of Western Trees”, “the long pendants have a rather sorrowful grace”. I consider them shaggy. And of the Northwest big trees the least aesthetically graceful. En masse their true beauty is revealed.

A walk among their trunks, here at Evans Creek Preserve east of Redmond, is part of why I love living in this dark corner of the continent. And encountering the giants in the Quinault or Queets valleys on the Olympic Peninsula is the only valid time to use the word “ awesome” in my estimation. They are often listed as the one of the tallest trees in the world along with other west coast conifers.

I hardly think of Doug-firs as Christmas tree. Yet, once they were the most common Christmas tree on the market, and because of this rather shaggy asymmetric habit were sheared into tight cone shapes. As more natural looking trees came into fashion they were replaced in numbers by the noble fir. In 2016 Oregon exported 5.2 million Christmas tree about a third of which were Doug-firs, over half were noble firs, which hold their needles longer and have a very architectural natural growth habit.

As a gardener I would never plant a Doug-fir, yet for years I have gardened under them. They create a harsh environment for plants. I find our native plants, plants often found under them to begin with, are the best plants to grow: Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) and salal (Gaultheria shallon).

I have a small stash of Doug-fir seedlings in my nursery waiting for a day when they are large enough to introduce into the wilder parts of our property. Already two, well over 40-feet tall, are growing in the back with some cedars and Sitka spruce. Farther back, the steep, undevelopable slopes of Tolt Hill are covered with them. They create a ragged fringed horizon line high above us, defining the valley like a wall does a room.
Each year when I start thinking about my yuletide conifer post I try to find some particularly beautiful species to focus on. I have always given Doug-firs the pass-by “for aesthetic reasons”. But since Thanksgiving I have been making them my primary focus, watching the half-grown plantings along freeways, the giants in my clients’ gardens, the seedlings in every nook and cranny.
Slowly this blinding ubiquity has taken on a grace all its own