COKTFERjE* 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



45 



immediately south of tlie boundary of the United StateS; although the Engelmann Spruce is a common 

 tree in the mountain forests of Montana and Idaho/ and ranges westward along the high mountains of 

 northern Washington and southward along both slopes of the Cascade Mountains to southern Oregon^ 

 and over the Powder River and Blue Mountains of eastern Washington and Oregon. It is common 

 on the Yellowstone plateau of northwestern Wyoming/ and southward occurs on all the mountain 

 ranges which rise ten thousand feet above the sea-level. It is the principal and most valuable timber- 

 tree of Colorado and Utah, forming great forests on all the high ranges^ generally growing to its largest 

 size at elevations of between nine thousand five hundred and ten thousand feet, but occasionally 

 descending to nine thousand feet and ascending to eleven thousand feet above the sea, and with Piniis 

 aristata reaching the extreme upper limits of the timber-line, where, although usually semiprostrate, it 

 sometimes develops a tall erect stem. It likewise forms forests on the high mountains of eastern 

 Nevada, and on the San Francisco Peaks in northern Arizona, where it ranges from nine thousand two 

 hundred feet up to eleven thousand five hundred feet, reaching with Pinus aristata the highest limit 



r _ ■ 



of tree-growth ; ^ it also grows in Arizona on Mount Graham and the Sierra Blanca, and near the 

 summit of the Mogollon Mountains in New Mexico.* 



The wood of Picea Engehnanni is very Hght, soft, not strong, and close and straight-grained, 

 with a satiny surface 3 it is pale yellow tinged with red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood, 

 numerous conspicuous medullary rays, few minute resin passages, and inconspicuous bands of small 

 summer cells. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.344:9, a cubic foot weighing 21.49 

 pounds. It is largely manufactured into lumber for the construction of buildings, and is also exten- 

 sively used for fuel and charcoal. The bark is employed locally in tanning leather. 



Picea Engelmanni^ which the botanists who first visited the Eocky Mountains ^ mistook for one of 

 the Spruces of the east, was first distinguished in 1862 by Dr. C. C. Parry ,*^ who found it on Pike's 

 Peak in Colorado. The following year he sent seeds to the Botanic Garden of Harvard University at 

 Cambridge, where this tree was probably first cultivated. It grows more slowly in New England, 

 where it is very hardy, than the other Spruces and Firs of the Eocky Mountains,*^ forming a narrow 

 symmetrical compact pyramid beautiful in shape and color; and in the Arnold Arboretum it has 

 already produced a few cones. Unfolding its buds very early in the spring, like other trees which 

 grow naturally only at high elevations, Picea Engelmanni suffers in western Europe from late spring 

 frosts, but in northern Eussia it has proved one of the hardiest of exotic conifers.^ 



In its specific name this tree, the fairest of its race, braving the fiercest mountain blasts, the ^ 

 fiery rays of the southern sun and the arctic cold of the northern winter, with tall and massive shafts 



British Columbia; but in southern Alberta and southern British 

 Columbia it grows to such a large size up to high altitudes aud is 



so generally distributed that no doubt it ranges much farther north- 

 ward along the Rocky Mountains. By Macoun {Cat. Can. PL 470) 

 it is stated that specimens collected on the Pease River plateau 

 (latitude 55° 46' 54", longitude 120°, altitude 2,600 feet) are refer- 

 able to Picea Engelmanni, while trees on the Athabasca (latitude 

 54° 7' 34", longitude 118° 48') belong to Picea Canadensis, but I 

 have not been able to see any specimen of Picea Engelmanni gath- 

 ered north of the line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. 



1 See Leiberg, Contrib. U. S. Nat Berb. v. 47. 



2 Tweedy, Flora of the Yellowstone National Park, 12, 74. 

 8 Merriam, North American Fauna, No. 3, 121. 



4 Rusby, Bull Torrey Bot. Club, ix. 80. 



^ On the 9th of September, 1805, Lewis and Clark, being then in 

 the second year of their transcontinental journey, were crossing the 

 Bitter Root Mountains by the Lolo Trail, and found that the timber 

 was " almost exclusively pine, chiefly of the long-leaved kind, with 

 some spruce and a sprinkling of fir resembling the Scotch Fir " 



(History of the Expedition under the Command of Lewis and Clarh, ed, 

 Coues, ii. 690). This Spruce of the Bitter Root Mountains must 

 have been Picea Engelmanni, which here first makes its appearance 

 in literature. (See Sargent, Garden and Forest, x. 29.) 



6 See vii. 130. 



^ Picea Engelmanni grows slowly also in its native forests. A 

 tree near the mining town of Cripple Creek in Colorado, ex- 

 amined by General Henry L. Abbot in 1896, had a trunk twelve 

 inches in diameter five feet from the surface of the ground and six 

 inches in diameter forty feet from the ground, and was two hundred 

 and fifty years old. The log specimen cut in Colorado for the 

 Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, New York, is twenty-three inches in 

 diameter inside the bark and four hundred and ten years old, with 

 sixty-eight years of sapwood, which is three eighths of an inch in 

 thickness. At the end of one hundred years the trunk of this tree 

 was only five and a quarter inches in diameter, and at the end of 

 its second century only eleven inches. 



8 Andr^, Card. Chron. n. ser. vii. 562. 



