CUT YOUR OWN CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS TREE
AT LYONIA PRESERVE
Enjoy a green Christmas this year by cutting your own tree at Lyonia Preserve in Deltona.
Residents can select their favorite sand pines from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 10 and 11. Bring your own saw and park along the entrance to Deltona Lakes Elementary School, 2022 Adelia Blvd.
While they are not traditional Christmas trees, sand pines are popular among Floridians.
These native trees have been likened to Charlie Brown Christmas trees because they’re sparse and sometimes lopsided. Two or three can be tied together to make a fuller tree, and many people decorate them and leave them outside for wildlife. Most of the trees are 4 – 5 feet tall, but they can grow up to 20 feet.
Lyonia Preserve, adjacent to the Deltona Regional Library at 2150 Eustace Ave., is a 360-acre scrub habitat that has three nature trails. Staff and volunteers routinely remove overgrown sand pines to create bare sand areas with low-growing vegetation preferred by the Florida scrub jays and gopher tortoises that live at Lyonia Preserve.
Donations are requested, and proceeds will be used by the Friends of the Library to purchase Florida habitat books for the Deltona Regional Library.
For more information, please call Bonnie Cary, environmental specialist for Volusia County, at 386-804-0437.
