Germany plans to clone the perfect Christmas tree, break Charlie Brown's heart

We've seen Christmas trees built out of spare car parts, discarded SCSI drives, OLED panels, and quadrocopter stacked boxes, but Germany? Their taking the old tannenbaum back to its roots -- and tweaking its genetic code. With the aide of a government grant, scientists in Germany are trying to develop a method of tree cloning suited to Nordmann Fir. The native pine is popular for yuletide trimmings, but can be difficult to grow -- as much as 40 percent of trees grown for the season wind up the wrong shade of green or have their growth stunted by frost. Plant biologists hope to have a healthy stock of cloned trees ready by 2016, assuming nothing goes terribly wrong. Perfectly cultivated clones or not, we still prefer 'ol Chuck Brown's charming twig.