Famous red spruce leaves lasting legacy in North Carolina

Red spruce reforestation within the Appalachian Mountains is working, and the project received a shot in the arm when a 78-foot red spruce named “Ruby” went from Haywood County, N.C., to Washington, D.C., in 2022 to spend about a month as the official U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree.

Ruby was plucked from the Pisgah National Forest, and the entire event was engineered by the U.S. Forest Service, a unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The publicity generated a boost in fundraising as well.

Scientists collected Ruby’s cones to use the seeds to produce a new generation of red spruce trees. The project is based at Southern Highlands Reserve (SHR), a nonprofit native plant garden, located near Lake Toxaway in Transylvania County, N.C.

 

“The biggest thing we are known for is the red spruce restoration,” said Kelly Holdbrooks, SHR’s executive director. She was interviewed recently by Jonathan Rich of The Transylvania Times, a biweekly newspaper published in Brevard. The red spruce species is considered endangered. 

“We’ve grown and planted about 6,000 red spruce trees on public lands in North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, and now we’ve been asked to grow 50,000 more,” she said. 

Holdbrooks considers the red spruce “a keystone species” that is valuable to tourism along the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

With Ruby as the centerpiece, the SHR and the U.S. Forest Service launched a capital campaign to raise $1 million for the construction of a state-of-the-art greenhouse. 

Additional partners include: the National Forest Foundation, headquartered in Missoula, Mont.; The Nature Conservancy, a global environmental organization based in Arlington, Va.; and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a bureau within the U.S. Department of the Interior. 

“Ruby will always be part of us, making music that will be sweet to our ears,” said Lorie Stroup, a member of the Pisgah National Forest staff. 

Ruby’s large trunk was returned to the North Carolina mountains to be repurposed into banjos and guitars. 

James Melonas, supervisor of the National Forests in North Carolina, told Christian Smith of the Asheville Citizen Times: “Ruby will pass through the hands of local instrument makers, each imprinting their own styles, musical influences and expertise upon the wood. Not only will these instruments sound beautiful, they will echo stories for generations to come across North Carolina.” 

Forestry officials thanked Buncombe County instrument makers Pisgah Banjo Co. of Fairview and Mountain Song Guitars of Candler “for giving Ruby a new life.”

 

Smith wrote that many musicians favor red spruce “for its stiffness and tonal quality, perfect for stringed instruments.” 

Caroline Eubanks of Garden & Gun magazine of Charleston, S.C., visited Ken Jones, owner of Mountain Song Guitars, who believes he has enough wood for six guitars. 

“The center of the trunk contained just the right grain pattern for a guitar,” Jones said. “There’s the sweet spot in the middle of the tree. Red spruce is actually my very favorite species of spruce to use for the tops of the guitars.”

 

Then there’s this commentary offered by a reader of the online “Banjo Hangout” discussion forum: “Red spruce is relatively heavy, has a high velocity of sound and the highest stiffness across and along the grain of all the top woods. (Red spruce) has a strong fundamental, but also…complex overtone content. Tops produce the highest volume, yet they also have a rich fullness of tone that retains clarity at all dynamic levels.” 

“In short, red spruce may well be the Holy Grail of top woods for acoustic steel-string guitars.” 

Someone ought to write a mountain music song about “Ruby.”