Rare trees are stolen in time for Christmas

A leading botanist fighting to save an endangered evergreen has urged people not to take precious young specimens being specially grown in Scotland to use as Christmas trees.

The Serbian spruce Picea omorika is endemic to only around 60 hectares of Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina.

This year, native trees have suffered “catastrophic losses” due to fires and experts say their conservation status could soon be raised to critically endangered.

Around 1,500 of the trees have been planted around Britain as part of an international conservation programme set up by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) to save threatened conifers.

But efforts to grow and monitor a priceless back-up population have been hit as young trees in Scottish so-called “safe sites” have been dug up, apparently to be decked in tinsel, baubles and fairy lights as Christmas decorations.

RBGE botanist Martin Gardner, coordinator of the International Conifer Conservation Programme, said that 30 Serbian spruces had been planted at one site in Perthshire since 2011. But, just 10 years on, with the species in greater peril than ever before, he said 19 of these have been stolen, all at Christmas time.

He said: “The Serbian spruce is an incredibly ornamental tree. It can grow up to 25 metres tall but it is pencil-shaped and as a young plant it looks like a Christmas tree.

“At this time of year we always lose some because they get nicked.

“At Kinnoull Hill in Perthshire we had 30 but we’ve lost most of them. Eery year some go missing. Someone goes there and digs up another four or five.”