M 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CONIFERjE. 



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broken into thin closely appressed irregularly shaped red-brown scales. The branchlets, which are 

 comparatively stout, are light green and covered with pale pubescence when they emerge from the buds, 

 and during their first autumn and winter are bright reddish brown or orange-brown in color and clothed 

 with rusty brown pubescence ; growing gradually darker during succeeding seasons, their bark loses 

 its pubescent covering, and when they are three or four years old it begins to separate into thin scales. 

 The winter-buds, which vary in size from one quarter to one third of an inch in length, are ovate and 

 acute, with light reddish brown closely appressed acute scales, and are often surrounded by the elongated 



r 



acicular scale-like upper leaves, which easily separate from their prominent persistent bases. The leaves 

 stand out from all sides of the branch, pointing forward, and are more or less incurved above the 

 middle ; they are tetragonal, acute or rounded and tipped at the apex with a short callous mucro, pale 

 bluish green when they first appear, dark green often slightly tinged with yellow and very lustrous at 

 maturity, marked on the upper surface with four rows of stomata on each side of the prominent midrib 

 and on the lower surface less conspicuously with two rows on each side of the midrib, from one half to 

 five eighths of an inch long and nearly one sixteenth of an inch wide. The staminate flowers are oval, 

 almost sessile, half an inch long and a quarter of an inch thick, with bright red conspicuously toothed 

 anther-crests. The pistillate flowers are oblong-cylindrical and about three quarters of an inch in 

 length, with rounded scales thin, reflexed and slightly erose on the margins, and obovate bracts rounded 

 and laciniate above. The cones are ovate-oblong and gradually narrowed from near the middle to the 

 acute apex, with concave rigid striate ob ovate-oblong scales rounded above and entire or slightly toothed 

 on their thin and often flexuose edges ; they are usually from an inch and a quarter to two inches 

 long, but vary from an inch to two and a half inches in length, and are borne on very short straight or 

 incurved stalks ; when f uUy grown they are light green or green somewhat tinged with purple, but 

 at maturity are light reddish brown and lustrous, and, beginning to fall as soon as the scales open late 

 in the autumn or during the early winter, generally all disappear from the branches the following 

 summer. The seeds are very dark brown and about an eighth of an inch long, with short broad wings 



full and rounded above the middle. 



The Red Spruce is distributed from the valley of the St. Lawrence River ^ and the northern shores 

 of Prince Edward Island southward through Quebec, the Maritime Provinces, and along the Atlantic 

 coast to southern Maine ^ and Cape Ann, Massachusetts,^ and through the hilly interior and the 

 mountainous parts of New England and New York and along the Alleghany Mountains to the high 

 peaks of western North Carolina. Comparatively rare and of small size north of the boundary of the 

 United States and in the neighborhood of the coast, the Red Spruce, which is an inhabitant of high 

 well drained gravelly slopes, is most abundant and attains its greatest dimensions in the elevated regions 

 of northern New England and New York, where, mingled with the Hemlock, the White Pine and 

 the Balsam Fir, the Larch, the Sugar Maple, the Yellow Birch and the Beech, it grows singly or in 

 small dense groves, often forming a large proportion of the forest. On the uplands of Massachu- 

 setts, especially on the Berkshire hills, and on the mountains which overlook the Hudson, it is not 

 rare; it is common on the mountains of southern New York and northern New Jersey, and is widely 

 scattered over the Alleghany Mountains in Pennsylvania, often forming a considerable part of the 



the northwest corner of the state of Massachusetts a plant of Picea 

 ruhens with naked snake-like branches, similar in habit to some of 

 the monstrous forms of the European Picea Abies, A portrait 

 of this plant, which is the only example recorded of such a depar- 

 ture from normal forms among the American Spruces, was published 

 on page 45 of the eighth volume of Garden and Forest. Young 

 plants raised by grafts from the Williamstown plant are now 

 growing in the Arnold Arboretum. 



^ Picea ruhens was fonnd in 1895 by Mr. J, G. Jack at St. 

 Catharines on the St. John's Railroad in Quebec. This is the 



most northern station from which this tree has been reported. It 

 appears to be common on the slopes of the Laurentian hills in the 

 St. Lawrence valley west of the Saguenay, as far west at least as 

 the city of Ottawa. I have no evidence beyond Lambert's state- 

 ment that the Red Spruce grows in Newfoundland. 



^ The Red Spruce is abundant on Gerrish Island off the mouth 

 of the Piscataqua River^ Maine. 



^ In June, 1896, Mr. J. H. Sears found Picea ruhens growing 

 singly and in small clumps over an area of about fifty acres near 

 the town of Rockport, Massachusetts. 



