If you go to an actual, dedicated garden center, and not a big box retailer, you should have better luck, and they tend to be a little cheaper there, too. I still see a lot of borderline-dead trees in dedicated plant stores, though, so be careful. The glitter doesn't even look festive. It looks stupid. Why do people abuse these poor, majestic araucarias so... (They're not even all that delicate. I'm not sure how garden centers kill them off that easily. I'm guessing overwatering. It looks more like rot. But not dropping foliage because of a drought response from root die-back. More like the rot's permeated into the needles, somehow. That actually seems like it'd indicate severe cold damage, but I'm not really sure how that would happen as they're kept indoors).

True norfolk island pine have large spacing between branches and are symmetrical. Their needle like foliage on the branches are also long a narrow. Btw... you can buy them in stores during holidays. They are frequently mixed up but we do have one that is a true Norfork island pine bought at meijer. Another helpful tip is the branches along the main terminal come out growing upward and then may level out or droop. The cook's branches immediately grow outward or downward. N. Island pine are also known for the dark green foliage and less peeking bark as they are not actual pine trees but are tropical. First photo is of our norfolk. It is 4-5years. Sunburns easily in direct sun. Needs high humidity otherwise drooping like this occurs. It recently changed locations due to a move and is not happy. Second photo is foliage. The top foliage is a cook and the second foliage is a norfolk island. I hope this helps.

Don't plant it within 100 feet of anything you care about. It's not invasive, but they're extremely brittle. One across the street came down in a mild March thunderstorm - not a hurricane - a couple years ago, crushing my boyfriend's car. The storm snapped it off at 10 feet above the ground. The ten-foot stump finally came down in a thunderstorm a few months ago, taking out a neighbor's fence. (these were planted in the right-of-way and the whole neighborhood had to beg the city to take its twin out.) They also tend to get kind of scraggly looking as they get taller. They don't keep that pretty conical shape down here. And because they get so tall, taking one out can require a tree guy with a cherry picker to top it several times in order to get rid of it without endangering nearby houses (had to do that in another house years ago, it's expensive.) I'd advise against anyone down here planting them. I know Geico would.

I bought a Norfolk Island Pine as a Christmas tree, and after the holidays repotted it and have kept it as houseplant. Shortly after repotting I noticed some beige-green caterpillar-like bugs crawling around in the top soil! I removed the ones I could see/find, put the plant outside for a few days and didn't notice any returning so I brought it back inside. Shortly after that, the same bugs returned. I went to a local garden store and was told that the most likely cause of the problem was unsterilized soil used for repotting (although I think I'd repotted other plants at the same time using the same bag of soil and haven't noticed any bugs in them), so I bought a bag of sterilized soil and repotted the tree. During repotting, I didn't see any bugs (I'd removed the ones visible on the top soil beforehand). This was a few months ago now and since that time I hadn't noticed any bugs. I was away for about 3 weeks, during which time a friend was watering my plants (she said she didn't notice any bugs during that time, but she also wasn't looking). Now that I'm back, I've removed about 15 dead bugs and one live one. Any ideas as to what these bugs are and what I should do to get rid of them once and for all? Any help would be much appreciated!