38 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



branches sometimes pendulous, developing very irregularly and often abruptly ascend- 

 ing at the extremities, stout branchlets coated with hoary toinentum usually persist- 

 ent until after their second winter, ultimately becoming nearly black, and prominent 

 winter-buds with conspicuous long white matted hairs fringing the margins of their 

 scales and often almost entirely covering the bud. Bark of young trees and of the 

 branches thin, rather lustrous, smooth, and pale gray tinged with yellow, becoming 

 loose and scaly on larger stems and on the large branches of old trees, and on fully 

 grown trunks ^-f thick and slightly divided by shallow fissures into irregularly 

 shaped plates covered by thin dark red-brown loosely attached scales. Wood heavy, 

 hard, coarse-grained, light reddish brown. 



Distribution. Near the timber-line on mountain slopes at elevations of 4000- 

 5200, from southern Alberta on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and the 

 interior of southern British Columbia, southward along the Cascade Mountains of 



Pic^ (59 



northern Washington to Mt. Stewart at the head of the north fork of the Yakima 

 River, and along the continental divide to the middle fork of Sun River, forming 

 here a forest of considerable size at elevations of 7000-8000, and to Pend d'Oreille 

 Pass, iMontana. 



3. PICEA, Link. Spruce. 



Pyramidal trees, with tall tapering trunks often stoutly buttressed at the base, 

 thin scaly bark, soft pale wood containing numerous resin canals, slender whorled 

 twice or thrice ramified branches, their ultimate divisions stout, glabrous or pubescent, 

 and leaf-buds usually in 3's, the 2 lateral in the axils of upper leaves. Leaves linear, 

 spirally disposed, extending out from the branch on all sides or occasionally appear- 

 ing 2-ranked by the twisting of those on its lower side, mostly pointing to the end 

 of the branch, entire, articulate on prominent persistent rhombic ultimately woody 

 bases, keeled above and below, 4-sided and stomatiferous on the 4 sides, or flattened 

 and stomatiferous on the upper or occasionally on the lower side, persistent from 

 seven to ten years, deciduous in drying. Flowers terminal or in the axils of upper 

 leaves, the staminate usually long-stalked, composed of numerous spirally arranged 

 anthers with connectives produced into broad nearly circular toothed crests, the pis- 

 tillate oblong, oval or cylindrical, with rounded or pointed scales, each in the axis of 

 an accrescent bract shorter than the scale at maturity. Fruit an ovoid or oblong- 



