I bought a natural tree for the first time, and this thing drinks a lot of water every day. Is this tree going to be very heavy when it’s time to dispose of it? I assumed that much of the water gets evaporated but I don’t sense that my living room is any more humid.
If you set a bucket of water in your living room with no tree in it, does that make your room palpably humid as it evaporates? Probably not.
Yes, some of the water is staying in the tree. But not much. Most of it is evaporating out of the bucket or is passing into and through the tree then evaporating out from the tree.
Yes, but I think this tree is going through a couple of gallons of water a day. I don’t think a bucket of water would evaporate at even close to that rate. I guess I’m thinking that the tree is either retaining the water or dispelling it at the same rate as a humidifier, but now realize that the room is pretty big.
A living, rooted conifer can be more than 50% water by weight. When cut, it starts to lose moisture: first from the free water held in pores and vessels of the wood, and later from the water contained in the cells themselves.
Your tree was perhaps cut some time before you bought it, and had dried out to some extent before you put it back into water. It will absorb and regain water up to a point, like a sponge, until it returns to near its original water content. Beyond that point, water losses through transpiration will be balanced by additional absorption.
Without knowing how dry your tree was when you got it, it’s impossible to say whether it will be heavier now that you’ve had it soaking for a while. It probably will be, but if you went out into a temperate rain forest and cut it yourself, it was probably as heavy at that time as it can get.
When you dispose of it, your tree will obviously be lighter by the weight of all the needles and twigs that it will drop on your rug, and the sap that it will leave on your skin and clothing.
Dude, spoilers… he said it was his first time with a natural tree!
When you say a ’ natural tree ’ do you mean a live tree or a dead real tree?
I assume a dead real one. I bought it in the Home Depot Christmas tree section. I didn’t know that it’s already dead. If I planted it outside, in lieu of mounting it on the stand, would it stand a chance? Clearly botany isn’t my strong suit.
I was aware of these issues, which is why I went with an artificial tree all these years. But this year my girlfriend convinced me. My hands still smell like tree from transporting it. And this thing already lost about 1,000 needles during the decoration process.
An interesting explanation of how and why trees suck up water.
Short answer - the tree isn't going to be much heavier afterwards.I think it’s acting more like a humidifier. Evaporation rate is a function of surface area, and those needles are giving you a lot of surface area.
And if there’s any photosynthesis going on, that will use water too. But I don’t know how much of that is going on in a cut tree.
No. Without roots, it cant get enough water to survive.
“Dead” is a difficult concept even for humans, and by the criteria we use for us all trees are dead. By a more appropriate definition for plants, a cut tree is alive, but doomed.
Some plants would be able to set roots and survive if small enough and in the right conditions, but a whole Christmas tree, not so much. You can keep it hovering on the brink for a while by keeping the stump submerged, but it’s going to be slowly dying no matter what.
Maybe murdered is the better word here … and the tree will take a very long time to die … suffering horribly … screaming in pain … until she’s finally cut up and burned while still living …
I’m guessing your inside environment is so dry that gallons of water added to the air doesn’t make a noticeable difference … even though this might double the amount of water vapor … usually we’re bringing in very cold air from outside and heating it up … this causes the relative humidity of this air to fall to a fairly large degree …
Also, for the most part the tree will be dead after she completely dries out … a few months of a lingering tortuous death … however I believe there’s a few species of willow that will (under the right circumstances) take root by just sticking the bottom end back into the soil … I’ve seen a few tall spindly willow trees at my favorite fishin’ hole growing with a bit of line and a bobber tied on …
This reminds me of the Jack Handy quote:
Too late for this year but here is a site that you should have checked before you went shopping:
Well, thre bucket has only the area of the top of the water within the bucket to evaporate from. But when it’s absorbed by the tree, it goes from the trunk up into the branches and out to all the leaves (needles) of the tree – that’s a whole lot more surface area for evaporation. Something like if you spread a tarp over the whole floor of the room, and dumped the bucket of water on that, so you had a puddle 1/8 inch deep spread all over the room – it would obviously evaporate much faster then.