If you're pining for a real tree but not for its needles in your carpet – or green just isn't your colour – we have glad tidings for you
IF YOUR household celebrates Christmas, you may well have chosen to put up an artificial tree this year. Fake Christmas trees have been around almost as long as the real thing, but they first began to sell in large numbers in the 1930s, when a toilet-brush manufacturer realised it could make them cheaply by slightly altering its product. Artificial trees are now more popular than the real thing, some surveys suggest, not least because they can last for years and don't drop annoying needles all over the carpet.
But tree growers aren't giving up without a fight. They have long been trying to develop more attractive trees to ...
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