I was at a garden center a while back, and my wife and I were going to buy a tree.
"How about this spruce?" she asks. "Naw." After a lot of prodding, I say "I prefer a yew."
When I think of spruce, I think of cheap 2x4 lumber. When I see an arborvitae (Thuja), I think of durable, rot-resistant fencing material. When I see a yew, I think of elvish bows. When I see a box (Buxus), I think of hard durable tool handles. So everything other than spruce feels a bit more noble to me.
So it ends up that my opinion of the tree is biased by the wood. Not that I would ever cut them up and use the lumber.
We ended up with a yew. In hindsight, I think a spruce would have been prettier with its conical shape; my yew is just this blob right now.
Sigh.
- Daniel