Inglorious end for unwanted trees

Wednesday, Dec. 31, 1997 | 9:12 a.m.

Every year, thousands of evergreen trees are chopped down, transported and sold to be decorated and cared for during the Christmas holidays.

When the need for the trees has passed, one can see local lots full of the once propped up symbolic trees lying in huge piles.

And what happens to the trees that never found a holiday home?

Many of the tree lots around the Truckee Meadows end up with anywhere from 10 to 600 unsold trees.

"They go to my mom's house," Marvin Blades, the manager of the Victorian Street Mystical Tree Farm said. "She uses them as fire wood."

The Mystical Tree Farms -- four are located in the area -- are supplied with Christmas trees from a private farm in Oregon. On Christmas Eve, more than 600 leftover trees were hauled off the lots.

"My mom buys the rest of the trees," Blades said. "She just sets a price for all of the trees left."

Scott's Trees on Oddie Boulevard near Kmart is run by a local tree farmer who said any tree remaining on his lot is donated to charitable organizations on Christmas Eve. Scott Ulch added that if trees still are left over, he donates them to a company that chips them into mulch.

At the Long's Drug Store on Prater Way in Sparks, employee Mario Dorett said most of the trees are sold because it is such a prime location. He added that other Long's Drug Stores send their unsold trees from their lots to the Prater lot to be sold in the week before Christmas because they seem to sell more quickly.

This year, more than 2,000 Christmas trees were sold at the Prate Way lot, most of them in the two weeks before Christmas.

In the last week of sales, all of the lots said they slash prices, offering last-minute shoppers the best bargains.

"All the trees are $10 today," Dorett said on Dec. 23. "You can pick whatever one you want."