84 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



Sp. 3. The Single or White Spruce. Abies alba. Michaux. 



Figured in Lambert's Pinus ; Plate 37. 



Michaux ; Sylva, III, Plate 148. 



This is a more slender and tapering tree of the swamps, 

 marked by the light color of the bark and lighter green of the 

 leaves. It rarely rises to the height of forty or fifty feet. It is 

 perfectly straight, with numerous, somewhat irregularly scat- 

 tered branches, forming a head of the same shape as that of the 

 double spruce, but less broad, and with foliage of a less gloomy 

 color, whence its name. The bark is of a light brown, some- 

 what roughened by scales an inch broad and of somewhat 

 greater length. 



The shoots are slender, of a light brown or yellowish color, 

 the bark seeming to be made up, as in the other species, of small 

 roundish ridges formed of the footstalks of the leaves extending 

 downwards and ending at a leaf below. The leaves are of a 

 light bluish green, in spirals rather closely set, and equally on 

 all sides of the shoot. On the horizontal branchlets, the short 

 footstalks of the leaves on the under side are so bent as to bring 

 all the leaves to the upper half of the branch. The leaves 

 usually fall off in two or three years, leaving a scaly surface 

 bristling with the short persistent footstalks. These gradually 

 disappear and the loose scales enlarge with the growth of the 

 branch. 



The root is remarkable for its toughness, and from it the 

 Canadian Indians make the threads with which they sew 

 together the birch-bark for their canoes. 



The cones, which are pale green when young, and afterwards 

 pale brown, vary in size extremely. As they grow here, they 

 are from three-quarters of an inch to one and one-half inches 

 long, nearly cylindrical in shape, or somewhat tapering, with 

 rounded ends. In Canada, they are often three inches long. 

 The scales are close set and perfectly smooth and entire on their 

 edge. 



The single spruce is thought to possess the excellent proper- 

 ties of the other species in an equal degree, and is preferred, 



