It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas to folks at the National Christmas Tree Association as rosy scenarios roll in on sales of real trees for the 2012 holiday season. “We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Rick Dungey, spokesman for the 5,000-member organization with headquarters in Chesterfield, MO.

Mr. Dungey noted that sales last year were up 14 percent over those for 2010, with 29.7 million trees bought in 2011. And prospects for this year are bright, also. “We’re excited about the possibility of more than 30 million trees being sold this year,” he said in a July 13 interview.

He pointed to a Harris poll taken in January that indicated 35 percent of all 118 million U.S. households would buy a real Christmas tree for the 2012 holidays. That’s up from a usual figure of 28 percent, he noted, and suggests sales could easily top 30 million trees this year.

Another sign for the glass-half-full view today and in the future: The same poll showed younger consumers were more likely to buy a real tree for Christmas. “There are 72 million young adults,” Mr. Dungey noted, “and they are more traditional and environmentally aware, they value family and friends holiday get-togethers and the family experience of buying a Christmas tree.”

Christmas tree sales are stressful for growers and retailers, he said, because they are jammed into a three-week period, involve perishable items and are mostly sold on a cash basis. The most common price paid for a real tree in 2011 was $34.87, he said. It takes about seven years to grow an average tree six to seven feet tall.

Consumers are demanding more choices in trees, he said, and growers are introducing new species with different types of needles, shearing trees in new styles, and offering more tree sizes and colors. Supermarkets and garden centers are offering a wider range of choices, from high-end trees to “grab-and-go” standard types, Mr. Dungey said.

A special holiday project for the association is Trees for Troops. It provides free Christmas trees for military families through donations of trees from growers, and the purchase of trees donated to troops by consumers at farms and retail outlets, including supermarkets. FedEx delivers all the trees to military posts nationwide and overseas free of charge. “We couldn’t do this without FedEx’s support,” Mr. Dungey observed.

Trees for Troops has been underway since 2005, and last year delivered its 100,000th tree. It was one of 20 organizations recognized at a White House ceremony for its work on behalf of military families. In 2011, Trees for Troops delivered 19,000 trees to 65 military bases here and overseas. About 750 farms donated trees, and 6,000 trees were bought and donated by consumers FedEx trucks logged over 60,000 miles delivering the trees.

Tree deliveries play out over an intense two-week period, but the organizing goes on year round, Mr. Dungey said. It involves surveys of bases to learn how many families want trees, of growers to find out how many they will donate, and of weekend sales locations to see how many they expect to sell, then coordinating pickups all over the nation and deliveries all over the world.

“It’s two weeks of 18-hour days,” Mr. Dungey observed. “But the trees have tags where donors can write a note to the military families that get the trees. Most are families left behind when troops are deployed overseas. Often, families write back to the donors to say how much the trees meant to them. Things like that make all the long hours worthwhile.”