40 



SILVA OF NOETH AMERICA. 



CONIFEK^. 



among the Black Hills of Dakota it is the largest and one of the most abundant coniferous trees, 

 often reaching a height of more than one hundred feet in the neighborhood of streams. It is common 

 in the region north of Lake Superior, but east of the Mississippi it nowhere extends very far south 

 of the northern boundary of the United States, and is not a large or valuable tree. 



The wood of Picea Canadensis is light, soft, not strong, and straight-grained, with a satiny 

 surface ; it contains numerous prominent medullary rays, few resin passages, and thin inconspicuous 

 bands of small summer cells, and is light yellow, with thin hardly distinguishable sapwood. The 

 specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4051, a cubic foot weighing 25.25 pounds. In the 

 eastern provinces of Canada, where it is probably the only Spruce which is cut in large quantities for 

 lumber, it is used in construction and for the interior finish of buildings, and for paper pulp, and is 

 largely exported to Europe. White Spruce lumber is also occasionally manufactured in Dakota and 

 Montana, and from this tree the miners of the Yukon obtain their lumber and the logs for their huts. 

 The Indians of the north used the long tough flexible roots of the White Spruce, and probably also 

 those of the Black Spruce, to fasten together the sheets of Birch bark from which they made their 

 canoes, and to weave water-tight baskets and vessels,^ and from the bark of young Spruce-trees they 

 made canoes when the Birch could not be found.^ 



The Spruce-trees which Jacques Cartier saw as he sailed up the Saguenay River in the autumn of 

 1535 were probably White Spruces,^ and it was the White Spruce which John Mason, writing in 1620, 

 included among the valuable timber-trees of Newfoundland.* First described by Miller in 1731,^ the 

 White Spruce is said to have been cultivated by Bishop Compton in England before the end of the 

 sixteenth century.*^ 



Picea Canadensis excels the other Spruces of eastern North America in massiveness of trunk and 

 in richness and beauty of foliage; and in regions sufficiently cold to insure the full development of all 

 its charms, no other Spruce-tree grows more vigorously or better adapts itself, with persistent lower 

 branches and shapely form, to decorate the parks and gardens of the north, although in the compara- 

 tively mild climate of southern New England and the middle states, and of western and central 

 Europe, it soon perishes or loses its value as an ornamental tree. 



A number of forms of the White Spruce,*^ some with leaves of darker or lighter shades of blue 

 and others of dwarf habit or with erect or pendent branches, are occasionally propagated in nurseries. 



^ " Watape Is the name given to the divided roots of the sprace- 

 fir, which the natives weave into a degree of compactness that 

 renders it capable of containing a fluid. The different parts of the 

 bark canoes are also sewed together with this kind of filament." 

 (Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence and 

 through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific 

 Oceans in the Years 1789 and 1793, 37. See, also, Eichardson, 

 Franklin Jour. Appx. No. 7, 752.) 



2 Kichardson, Arctic Searching Exped. il. 316. 



3 "Depuis le 19 jonr jusques au 28, dudict moys nous auons 



estd nauigans a mont ledict fleuve sans perdre heure ny jour, 



durand lequel temp auos veu & trouv^ d'aussi beau pays & terras 



aussi vuyes que Ton scauroit desirer, plaine comme diet est des 



beaulx arbres du monde, scauolr chesnes, hormes, noyers, cedres, 



pruches, fresnes, briez, fandres, oziers, & force vignes." (Bref 



Recit et Succincte Narration de la Navigation faite in MDXXXV. 



MDXXXVI. Par le Captain Jacques Cartier aux lies de Canada 

 24.) 



r 



* " The Land of the North parts most mountanye & woodye very 

 thick of Firre trees, Spruce, Pine, Lereckhout, Aspe, Hasill, a kind 

 of stinking wood; the three formest goodly Timber and most con- 

 venient for building." (John Mason, A Briefe Discourse of the 



New-found-land.') 



5 Ahies; Picem foliis brevioribus, conis parvisj biuncialibus taxis. 

 Diet. No. 6. 



Abies Canadensis, picece foliis hrevioribus, conis par vis ^ biuncialibus, 

 laxis, Charlevoix, Hisioire de la Nouvelle France, ed. 12mo, iy. 369, f. 



6 Loudon, Arb. Brit. iv. 2310, f. 2224. 



^ The handsomest of the numerous cultivated forms of the 

 White Spruce is the tree with light blue leaves rather closely 

 pressed against the branches, which has been known in gardens 

 under one name or another for more than a century. It is : — 



Picea Canadensis glauca, Sudworth, Bull. No. 14, Div. Forestry, 

 U. S. Dept. Agric. 37 (1897). 



Pinus glabra, Moeuch, Bdume Weiss. 73 (1785). 



Abies rubra coerulea, Loudon, Arb. Brit. iv. 2316 (1838). 



Abies coerulea, Forbes, Pinetum Woburn. 99 (1839). 



Picea ccerulea, Link, Linncea, xv. 522 (1841). 



Pinus rubra, B violacea, Endlicher, Syn. Conif 114 (1847). 



F 



Abies alba ccerulea, Carrifere, Traite Conif. ed. 2, 320 (1867). 



Abies Americana ccerulea, Beissner, Handb. Conif. 509 (1887). 



Picea alba cosrulea, Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 341 (1891), 

 The other forms of the White Spruce found in European gar- 

 dens, dwarf in habit or more or less abnormal in mode of growth 

 or in the color of their foliage, have little to recommend them as 

 ornamental plants. (For a description of these varieties, see Beiss- 

 ner, I. c. 342.) 



