CHINA – Clark Granger stands in his snowy field looking proudly upon rows of Christmas trees that are two years away from standing in living rooms decorated with tinsel and ornaments.

These trees – 15,000 in all – may look like plain old balsam firs to the casual observer. But they’re not, he says.

Instead, these balsams represent the latest, greatest efforts by Maine farmers to produce a Christmas tree that grows faster and denser, drops fewer needles, resists pests and requires less trimming.

The goal is to grow the perfect tree every time for choosy consumers while reducing the workload for the grower.

“We can consistently grow a tree that consumers really like. That’s No. 1. If we can do it with less time and less labor, that’s even better,” said Jim Corliss, president of the National Christmas Tree Association.

In Maine, growers have succeeded in reducing the amount of time it takes for trees to reach market size by one to two years, and they swear that their trees require less cutting to get the right shape.

They’re not the only ones tapping science in the effort to avoid sad-looking Charlie Brown trees.

Across the country, efforts are afoot among many of the nation’s 15,000 growers to produce better trees and entice customers away from artificial trees, which now represent the majority of Christmas trees displayed in homes.

Weir Tree Farms in Colebrook, N.H., has created something akin to the Holy Grail of Christmas trees: a Fraser-balsam combination that has the fragrant smell of balsams and needle retention Frasers are known for.

It’s called “Fralsam” and it was a happy accident for grower William Weir, who mixed Fraser and balsam seeds by happenstance.

“Once a person has any of these, they don’t want anything else,” Weir said proudly. He has patented the Fralsam name and ships the trees across the country for $49.50 a pop, not including shipping.

Cross breeding in trees is rare and usually happens only by accident. Most tree farmers are relying more on science.

In the South growers have been cloning specialty trees for decades, said Clarke Gernon, a grower in Louisiana.

On his Shady Pond Tree Farm in Pearl River, La., Gernon has produced a hybrid of the Arizona Cyprus and Alaskan Cedar called Leyland Cyprus, a tree whose leaves are green and white with some gold.

“It’s pretty darn spiffy stuff,” he said.

In Maine, Granger’s trees, located on 80 acres in this town 20 miles from the state capital, are green instead of gold, but at five years old they’re bigger and thicker than a typical tree.

“This is the sort of tree that we’re trying to grow,” he says, squatting next to a 3-foot-high perfectly shaped balsam fir. His trees all have the same mother but a different father, though all come from the same selective seed pool.

Granger, a plant pathologist with the Maine Forest Service, said he’ll be able to bring these trees to market in nearly half the time.

That’s good news to the state’s 230 or so growers, who started thinking about how to build a better Christmas tree in 1980.

Tree experts spent several years scouring the United States and Canada for the best balsam firs based on shapeliness, rich color, fast growth, needle retention and resistance to disease and insects.

Growers transplanted cuttings from those trees onto regular stock. The resulting parent trees – or phenotypes – were grouped together on two seed farms to ensure that only the very best trees cross pollinated each other.

It worked so well that within a few years there was enough genetically enhanced seed to supply prodigy material to five test farms.

The genetically improved trees are denser and require less pruning, which leads to a big savings for growers who now must clip trees three times over a seven-year growing span, at a cost of 25 cents to $1 a tree.

While Maine’s trees may be bigger and greener, even with the genetic tampering no two trees will ever turn out exactly alike, said Maxwell McCormack, a retired University of Maine forestry professor.

“There is no perfect Christmas tree except, my wife says, ours. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he said.

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On the Net:

National Christmas Tree Association http://www.realchristmastrees.org

Maine Christmas Tree Association http://www.mainechristmastree.com

AP-ES-12-21-03 1315EST