CONIFERS 



41 



and growing to its largest size ; common in Newfoundland and all the provinces of 

 eastern Canada except southern Ontario ; in the United States less abundant and 

 usually only in cold sphagnum swamps. 



Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree, the Black Spruce is short-lived in cul- 

 tivation and one of the least desirable of all Spruce-trees for the decoration of parks 

 and gardens. 



2. Picea rubens, Sarg. Red Spruce. 



Leaves more or less incurved above the middle, acute or rounded and furnished 

 at the apex with short callous points, dark green often slightly tinged with yel- 

 low, very lustrous, 

 marked on the upper 

 surface by 4 rows of 

 stomata and on the 

 lower less conspicu- 

 ously by 2 rows of 

 stomata on each side 

 of the prominent mid- 

 rib, ^' I' long, nearly 

 ^ig' wide. Flowers: 

 staminate oval, al- 

 most sessile, bright 

 red; pistillate ob- 

 long-cylindrical, with 

 thin rounded scales 





reflexed and slightly erose on their margins, and obovate bracts rounded and lacini- 

 ate above. Fruit on very short straight or incurved stalks, ovate-oblong, gradually 

 narrowed from near the middle to the acute apex, 1^-2' long, with rigid puberu- 

 lous scales entire or slightly toothed at the apex ; bright green or green somewhat 

 tinged with purple when fully grown, becoming light reddish brown and lustrous 

 at maturity, beginning to fall as soon as the scales open in the autumn or early 

 winter, and generally disappearing from the branches the following summer ; 

 seeds dark brown, about ^' long, with short broad wings full and rounded above the 

 middle. 



A tree, usually 70-80 and occasionally 100 high, with a trunk 2-3 in dia- 

 meter, branches long-persistent on the stem and clothing it to the ground, forming 

 a narrow rather conical head, or soon disappearing below from trees crowded in 

 the forest, stout pubescent light green branchlets, becoming bright reddish brown 

 or orange-brown during their first winter, glabrous the following year, and covered 

 in their third or fourth year with scaly bark. Winter-buds ovate, acute, \'-^' 

 long, with light reddish brown scales. Bark Y~k' thick, and broken into thin closely 

 appressed irregularly shaped red-brown scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, 

 not strong, pale slightly tinged with red, with paler sap wood usually about 2' thick; 

 largely manufactured into lumber in the northeastern states, Pennsylvania, and 

 western Virginia, and used for the flooring and construction of houses, for the 

 sounding-boards of musical instruments, and in the manufacture of paper pulp. 



Distribution. Well-drained uplands and mountain slopes, often forming a large 

 part of extensive forests, from Prince Edward Island and the valley of the St. 

 Lawrence southward to the coast of Massachusetts, along the interior hilly part of 



