New Christmas tree for the market
Predecessor had to be demolished due to crack
On Thursday afternoon, 26 November, just in time for the 1st Advent, the Chemnitz market will once again have a Christmas tree. The lights will be installed on Friday. This is the second attempt after the first spruce had to be removed last week for safety reasons. The new tree also comes from the Wildenthal forest district of the Sachsenforst state enterprise in Eibenstock. It is around 26 metres tall, and around 20 to 23 metres will be visible once it has been erected.
Last Thursday, a crack was discovered when the lighting was tested, as a result of which part of the market was cordoned off as a precaution. Further investigations revealed that vertical cracks, some of which ran around the trunk, extended from the lower end of the trunk to around three and a half metres below the top of the tree. The cracks were between seven and nine centimetres deep, with the lower end of the trunk completely torn through. The tree was therefore no longer stable and was removed immediately on Friday morning.
Luckily, the market and parks department have various options in reserve in the city and state forest for such cases. In addition, numerous Chemnitz residents had also come forward and offered private trees. In organisational terms, however, the "replacement tree" in Sachsenforst was the quickest solution to implement.
The usable branches from the "unlucky tree" will be used to decorate the market square for Christmas. Unfortunately, the trunk wood cannot be used to make boards or slats due to the massive cracks.
The extensive crack was probably caused by uneven distribution of forces in the trunk. Various factors play a role here, such as different wood moisture content, the cell wall thickness of the wood, the composition of the wood in terms of early and late wood content and, of course, the drying out of the wood due to the very mild weather in the past few days since the tree was erected.
In general, it can be observed that the average wood density of spruce trees has decreased by around ten per cent over the past 120 years, while at the same time the volume growth has increased considerably. This phenomenon goes hand in hand with longer growing seasons and high nitrogen inputs from agriculture.