EAST MACHIAS – William Sellner is out the door before the crack of dawn. In the dark, he drives 42 miles across Washington County and then navigates his truck deep into the woods on a logging road.

Then, as his breath forms puffs in the cold air, he trudges into the forest that’s still except for occasional gunfire.

Dressed in blaze orange, Sellner looks the part of a hunter, but he doesn’t need a gun. He is gathering branch tips from fragrant balsam fir for Christmas wreaths that will be shipped across the country.

“It’s a pretty solitary type of job. Sometimes you see somebody in the morning, maybe a couple of hunters,” said Sellner, who works alone. “Then you won’t see anyone for the rest of the day.”

Such workers, called “tippers” or “brushers,” are hard at work to keep wreath makers in the green this holiday season.

Nationwide, wreath making is growing as more and more people demand fresh greenery during the holidays. And mail-order companies have helped bring the tradition to all corners of the country.

“Our Christmas tree sales are flat, but wreath sales keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Jim Corliss of Newburgh, who is president-elect of the National Christmas Tree Association.

Official sales figures are hard to come by since wreath making is a cottage industry in which many people work in their homes.

But industry observers agree that the market is expanding.

Morrill Worcester, whose company supplies L.L. Bean with wreaths and other balsam products, has grown from producing several thousand wreaths two decades ago to several hundred thousand wreaths today.

“The demand for wreaths is higher than it’s ever been,” said Worcester, owner of Worcester Wreath Co. in Harrington.

L.L. Bean gets credit for raising the profile of wreaths when it began offering them in its catalog in 1983. Over the past decade, sales of balsam products have tripled, said spokeswoman Mary Rose MacKinnon.

In Maine, cheap wreaths from Canada have cut into the wholesale market, but the state still produces upward of 1.5 million wreaths a year, said Dugald Kell, whose company provides metal frames and decorations to wreath makers.

The top wreath-making region is the Midwest, where upward of 5 million wreaths are produced each year, and the Pacific Northwest is not far behind, Kell said. New England accounts for about 2.5 million wreaths, and North Carolina produces about 1 million wreaths, he said.

The biggest growth has been in mail-order wreaths, which often sell for $40, compared to about $4 for an undecorated wholesale wreath, Kell said.

It’s unclear why demand for fresh Christmas wreaths continues to grow, while demand for live trees has remained steady between 33 million and 35 million.

Kell believes that northerners who moved to the South brought the tradition of fresh wreaths with them. Corliss believes some people prefer a wreath because, unlike a Christmas tree, it requires little care.

And many people who display wreaths aren’t settling for just one. “Now they have one in every window,” Corliss said.

Maine’s wreath-making industry is centered in Washington County, where there are plenty of balsam firs.

On the front line during the six-week season are the wreath makers. Those with fast hands can make eight to 10 wreaths an hour, meaning they can make up to $15 an hour at about $1.50 per wreath.

Behind the scenes are people like Sellner, who drives eight miles down a dirt road and then walks 1,000 yards into the woods to collect the raw material that will be assembled and decorated.

Sellner snaps the tips off the branches and leaves them on the ground as he makes his way through the woods. Later, he backtracks and carries the brush out in bundles that weigh about 60 or 70 pounds.

For Sellner, a French chef, the work is lucrative enough to lure him out of the Ivy Manor restaurant in Bar Harbor after it closes for the season.

On a typical day, Sellner hauls 500 pounds of tips, which fetch about $150 at a going rate of 25 to 35 cents a pound.

The heavy demand for wreaths means many balsam trees near roads have been stripped of their tips already, forcing Sellner and others to go deeper and deeper into the woods each year in search of good material.

“A couple of years ago, it seemed like a cottage industry. Now it’s really growing,” Sellner said.