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Spruces — Part 1

The lumber value of the Engelmann spruce is high. It is used for general building purposes, for fuel and charcoal. The bark is sometimes used in tanning.

The Red Spruce (P. rubens, Sarg.) is the most cheerful of our Eastern species, because its foliage is yellowish green and shining, the others blue-green. The colour in this tree's name is derived from the wood, so the lumberman gave it, without doubt. The slender, downy twigs are also bright red during their first winter, and there is a distinct tinge of red in the tree's brown bark. The flowers are rich purple and the cones glossy reddish brown. It wears its colour in plain sight the year round.

This tree forms considerable forests from Newfoundland through New England, and follows the Alleghany Mountains into North Carolina. It has the spruce habit, but it rarely sacrifices its lower limbs even when crowded. In height these trees range from 75 to 100 feet, with trunks 2 to 3 feet in diameter. The wood is used for lumber and paper pulp. It is peculiarly adapted for sounding boards of musical instruments, and makes excellent flooring. It is occasionally cultivated, but other species are usually preferred. Its twigs are boiled to make spruce beer.

White Spruce (Picea Canadensis, B. S. & P.)--Broadly pyramidal tree, 60 to 150 feet high, with stout branches, smooth twigs and bad-smelling foliage. Bark greyish brown, breaking into scaly plates. Wood light, soft, yellow, brittle. Buds ovate, scaly. Leaves spread on upper side of twig, bluish, sharp, hoary when young, 1/2 to 3/4 inch long. Flowers both kinds cone-like, pale red, turning yellow. Fruit oblong-cylindrical, stalked cones, blunt; scales blunt or notched at broad apex, shiny, thin, falling soon after seeds ripen. Preferred habitat, rocky slopes, banks of rivers or lakes. Distribution, Labrador to Bering Strait; south to Montana, northern Dakota, Michigan and Wisconsin, New York and New England. Uses: Lumber for building and interior finishing, and for paper pulp. Tree planted for ornament and shade. Variety coerulea most common in cultivation.

The pale bark and pea-green foliage of the white spruce enable one to account for its name without difficulty and to identify it in the woods. The whitish wood is not distinctly paler than that of the black spruce. The ill-smelling foliage and the smooth twigs better distinguish it, and the cones, which are twice as long as the black spruce's. They are shed almost as soon as they open, a tree habit that keeps the branches clean and thrifty in appearance.

White spruce is the pulp manufacturer's delight. He owns thousands of acres of it. As lumber the wood is used only in Alaska and Canada in lieu of better kinds. The inferiority of spruce lumber has saved it for the comparatively new enterprise of pulp manufacture.

Blue Spruce (Picea Parryana, Sarg.)--Handsome tree, 80 to 125 feet high, broadly pyramidal; branches rigid, horizontal, in remote whorls. Bark grey, thick, broken into rounded, scaly ridges; on young trees often reddish, in oblong plates. Wood light, fine grained, soft, weak, pale. Buds stout, blunt, large, with reflexed scales. Leaves dull blue-green to silvery white, variable; rigid, stout, curving, horny pointed, striped on both sides with white, 3/4 to 1 1/8 inches long, shorter on fruiting twigs. Flowers: staminate reddish yellow; pistillate green, the scales square at end, and bracts pointed. Fruit, stalked cones, pendant on upper limbs, 2 to 3 inches long, oblong, brown, shining; scales flat, narrowing to finger-like blunt point; seeds winged. Preferred habitat, elevation 6,000 to 10,000 feet, banks of streams. Distribution, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Uses: Ornamental tree planted in Europe and United States. Hardy, and grows well in Middle West; conspicuous in the East.

We have come to feel well acquainted with the blue spruce of Colorado through the beautiful blue or silver-leaved specimen trees so common on lawns everywhere we go. It is a cool, crisp-looking tree, of perfect symmetry, the whorls of branches well apart, insuring the full development of leaves and branchlets. It is a disappointment to its owner that the growing tree loses at length its lower limbs and the symmetry of its top. Yet this is a far-off event, and there are years of satisfaction ahead for the buyer of a handsome little blue spruce for his garden. Shrubbery can be tucked in around the tree when it begins to age, and other trees so placed as to hide its shortcomings.

Weeping Spruce (Picea Breweriana, Wats.)--Tree 75 to 125 feet high, with swollen base and tapering shaft; branches drooping and crowded, to the ground; twigs remarkably long and slender. Bark brick red, thin, scaly. Wood soft, close grained, satiny, pale brown, heaviest of native spruces. Buds conical, small, scaly, brown. Leaves flattened on the upper side only, blunt, pale above, dark green and lustrous beneath, 3/4 to 1 1/4 inches long. Flowers: staminate rich purple; pistillate oblong; scales broad, rounded, turning out at edge, with cut-toothed bract under each. Fruit slender cones, 2 to 4 inches long, tapering, stalked, purple turning to orange-brown, opening in autumn, but hanging a year empty; scales broad, entire, thin, turning backward; seeds winged. Preferred habitat, dry ridges on mountains near timber line. Distribution, elevation 4,000 to 7,000 feet, California and Oregon. In isolated groves in coast ranges.