HARDWOOD RECORD 



19 



AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



Black Spruce 



Picea nigra — Link. 

 Picea Mariana — Mill. 



Tile range of gron"th of blaek spruce is 

 from Newfoundland to Hudson Bay and the 

 valley of the Mackenzie river; southward 

 through JJichigan, Wisconsin and iliunosota 

 and along the Alleghany mountains t<i Xnrth 

 Carolina. The tree is essentially a 

 northern growth, and attains its 

 largest size and is most abundant in 

 Canada, forming extensive forests in 

 Manitoba and the Labrador penin- 

 sula. In the United States it is 

 smaller and less frequent, its growth 

 being confined largely to the 

 northern borders of New York and 

 New England, the lake shores in 

 Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin 

 and to the cold, damp woods and 

 swampy bogs in the other regions of 

 its growth. 



There are three species of the 

 genus Picea found east of the Bocky 

 mountains, red, blaek and white. Bed 

 spruce is most abundant in West 

 Virginia and the Appalachian 

 country, and the black spruce in New 

 England and northern New York, 

 although the two are found inter- 

 mingled to some extent in both these 

 sections. Bed and black spruce trees 

 are very much alike in appearance, 

 but botanists have distinguished be- 

 tween them by two main points of 

 difference, the size and shape of the 

 cones and staminate blossoms and 

 the fact that the cones of the red 

 spruce, which are the larger, fall 

 during the first winter, while those 

 of the black spruce have great stay- 

 ing qualities and remain on the 

 branches for several years. The tim- 

 ber of the two varieties is also very 

 similar, so that some botanists ela.ss 

 them as two different forms of the 

 same species. There is some differ- 

 ence in the color of the foliage of 

 the two trees, that of the red spruce 

 being a light olive green, while the 

 black spruce displays a darker olive 

 with a slight purplish tinge. 



Black spruce belongs to the pine 

 family. The tree has a straight 

 smooth trunk, and under favorable 

 •conditions reaches a height of 

 one hundred feet and a diameter of tw;o 

 feet; its usual range is from forty to eighty 

 feet in height and from one-half to one and 

 a half feet in diameter. The tree is some- 

 times planted for ornamental purposes, but 

 it is short lived under cultivation and is one 

 of the least satisfactory of all the spruces 

 for decorative planting. 



Spruce is usually found in pure stands and 



EIGHTY-FIRST PAPER 



only occasionally does it grow interspersed 

 with hemlock. It is not such a rapid grow- 

 ing tree as is generally supposed, as observa- 

 tions have proved that its average increase is 

 approximately two per cent a year. A large 

 percentage of the cutting of black spruce in 

 northeastern United States is from second - 

 growth trees. 



TY 



PIC.VL FOREST (JKOWTU BLACIv .STRUCK, GRAFTON 

 COUNTY. NEW HAMI'SHIRE. 



The black spruce tree is conical in shape, 

 with slender branches, usually pendulous with 

 an upward curve, forming an open and irreg- 

 ular head. Alice Lounsberry, in describing 

 the tree, says: 



"To speak definitely of the outlines of 

 trees is often difEeult, for they adapt them- 

 selves with wonderful facility to the various 

 conditions under which they grow. The 



black spruce when it inhabits dense thickets 

 sends up a tall and slender shaft, quite free 

 from branches until near its top; but when 

 growing in an open swamp with plenty of 

 room for a free development it is often 

 clothed to the ground with vigorous boughs. 

 It then is very beautiful. After its youth 

 nas passed, however, and especially in culti- 

 vation, it becomes scraggly and 

 rough-looking. Only when the tree 

 is surrounded by abundant moisture 

 does it thrive well, and near the 

 coasts of southern New England, 

 New York and New Jersey, it oc- 

 i-upies many small swamps and bogs. 

 From those of the red spruce its 

 leaves are readily distinguished, for 

 they are shorter and of a bluer tint 

 of green. ' ' 



Black spruce is also known by the 

 name water spruce in Maine; blue 

 spruce in Wisconsin; double spruce 

 in Maine, Vermont and Minnesota; 

 yew pine and spruce pine in West 

 ^'irginia; merely as spruce in Ver- 

 mont ; as white spruce in West Vir- 

 ginia and as he balsam in Delaware 

 and North Carolina. 



The bark of the tree is grayish 

 l)rown and rather rough. On the 

 branchlets it is green and pubescent, 

 turning brown in time. The needle- 

 shaped leaves are seldom over two- 

 thirds of an inch long, dark bluish 

 green in color, four-sided and curved 

 iir straight. They grow very close 

 together on all sides of the light tan 

 twigs. 



The cones are from one-half to one 

 and a half inches long, turning tan 

 color to reddish brown from the rich 

 purple shade they possess on appear- 

 ance. They are solitary and drooping 

 at the ends of the branches and re- 

 main on the tree for several years, 

 assuming a duU gray brown color 

 with age. The scales are thin, 

 rounded and persistent, wavy-toothed 

 at the apex. 



The wood of the black spruce is 

 light, soft, elastic and resonant. For 

 its weight it is, like red spruce, one 

 of the strongest American woods. 

 Lumbermen recognize no difference 

 between black and red spruce, 

 and they class the two together. 

 Black spruce is pale yellow-white in color, 

 with thin sap-wood; clear, with the exception 

 of a few small knots. It weighs, seasoned, 

 thirty-two pounds to the cubic foot. The wood 

 i« used largely for pulpwood, and also ex- 

 tensively in house building, for ordinary 

 flooring, roofing, joists, sheathing, interior 

 finish and studding, and is a very popular 

 building material in New York and New 



