Each Christmas, families around the world gather around evergreens, real or fake, to celebrate the season.

But what holiday revellers may not realise is just how incredible these spruce, fir and pines can be.

In the wild, evergreen conifers survive drastic temperature swings, grow to towering heights and create ecosystems that shelter strange and wonderful creatures.

Here are some the secrets of Christmas trees and their tough, tenacious lives.

(1) CHRISTMAS TREE CAN TURN TO GLASS

Here's a party trick not to try without the proper safety equipment: drop a sprig of Siberian spruce (Picea obovata) or Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of -196 degrees Celsius. Providing you've pre-chilled the plant to -20 degrees Celsius or so, the sprig will survive.
This incredible cold tolerance serves conifers in the boreal forests of Siberia, where winter temperatures regularly get below -60 degrees Celsius.

(2) CHRISTMAS TREE ARE HOME TO TARANTULAS

Far south of Siberia, on the other side of the world, Christmas trees and tarantulas go together like bread and butter.Fraser firs (Abies fraseri) and red spruce (Picea rubens) provide the shelter needed to keep the spruce-fir tarantulas' rocky, mossy habitats cool and damp. Too much sun will dry the spiders out; too many water droplets can flush out their tube-like webs, which they weave in the miniscule spaces between rocks and moss mats.

(3) CHRISTMAS TREES ARE TALL

Most of the Christmas trees scraping the ceilings of sitting rooms are a mere 10 years old or so. Given the right time and conditions, though, Christmas trees can become true behemoths.
The Herculean effort is even visible in the tree's anatomy.

(4) CHRISTMAS TREE CREATE THEIR OWN ECOSYSTEM

A tree, as long as a soccer pitch is tall, is a world unto itself.
"It's like a different biome when you're at the top of the tree," said Brian French, a professional tree-climber and co-founder of Ascending the Giants, a non-profit organisation in Oregon, US dedicated to measuring and preserving the world's oldest and largest trees.

(5) CHRISTMAS TREES MAY STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

Christmas trees are quite adaptive, and capable of growing well outside their native range. Temperature might also affect growth. Too much heat might also harm spruces, firs and their relatives because these trees are simply not made to withstand warmth.





NB: BBC

all this doesn't apply to our fake trees here