CONIFERS. 



8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



47 



PIOEA PARRYANA. 



Blue Spruce. Colorado Spruce. 



GoNES oblong-cylindrical, their scales rhomboidal, elongated, flexuose, rounded or 



truncate at the erose apex. Branchlets glabrous. Leaves rigid, spinescent, blue-green, 

 or silvery white. 



Picea Parryana. 



Abies Menziesii, Engelmann, Am. Jour, Sci, ser. 2, xxxiv. 



330 (not Lindley) (1862) ; Gard. Chron, n. ser. vii. 790. 



Watson, King's Bey. v. 333 (in part). — Andr^, Gard, 



Chron. n. ser. vii. 562. — Porter & Coulter, Fl. Colorado ; 



Hayden Surv. Misc. Pub. No. 4, 131. — Brandegee, Bat. 



Gazette, iii. 33. 



725, f . 130 ; ser. 3, x. 547, f . 73, 74 ; Jour. B. Hort, 

 Soo. xiv. 223. — Eegel, Buss. Dendr. ed. 2, pt. i. 37. — 

 Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am, 10th Census U, 8. ix. 

 205. — 



— Coulter, Man. Rocky Mt. Bot. 431. 

 Wald. Nordam. 352. — 



— Mayr, 

 Beissner, Handh. Nadelh. 346. — 



Hansen, Jour. R. Hort. Soc. xiv. 437 (Finetum Dani- 

 cum). — Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 24. 



Picea Menziesii, Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. ii. Abies Engelmanni glauca, Veitcli, Man. Conif. 69 (1881) 



214 (not Carribre) (1863). 

 Abies Menziesii Parryana, Andre, III. Hort. xxlii. 198 



(1876) ; xxiv. 53, 119. — Roezl, III. Hort. xxiv. ^%. 

 Picea pungens, P^ngelmann, Gard. Chron. n. ser. xi. 334 



(1879) ; xvii. 145. — Masters, Gard. Chron. n. ser. xx. 



Picea , pungens, a viridis, Kegel, Buss. Dendr. ed. 2, pt. i. 

 37 (1883). 



Picea pungens, /3 glauca, Kegel, Buss. Dendr. ed. 2, pt. i. 

 37 (1883). 



A tree, usually from eighty to one hundred but occasionally one hundred and fifty feet in height, 

 with a trunk which is rarely three feet in diameter, and is occasionally divided into three or four stout 

 erect secondary stems. Until the age of thirty or forty years the branches of Picea Parryana^ the 

 most variable of all the American Spruces in habit, are horizontal, stout, rigid, and disposed in remote 

 ■whorls, and, decreasing regularly in length from below upward, form a broad-based symmetrical 

 pyramid, their short stout stiff branchlets pointing forward and making flat-topped masses of foliage ; 

 later some of the branches near the middle of the tree often grow more rapidly than those below them, 

 and, spreading widely, turn upward toward the ends in graceful curves, shading and eventually killing 

 those below them. On old trees, which are generally destitute of lower branches, the crown is thin, rag- 

 ged, and pyramidal, with short remote branches and stout pendent branchlets; sometimes it is rounded 

 by the lengthening and spreading of the upper branches, and often the lowest branches are pendent and 

 the upper branches erect. The bark of young trees is gray or gray tinged with cinnamon-red and 

 broken into small oblong plate-like scales, and on the lower part of old trunks it is from three quarters 

 of an inch to an inch and a half in thickness and deeply divided into broad rounded ridges covered with 

 small closely appressed pale gray or occasionally bright cinnamon-red scales. The winter-buds are stout, 

 obtuse, or rarely acute, and from one quarter to nearly one' half of an inch in length, with thin pale 

 chestnut-brown scales rounded, scarious, and often more or less reflexed at the margins. The branchlets 

 are stout, rigid, and glabrous, and when they first appear are pale glaucous green ; becoming bright 

 orange-brown during the first winter, they gradually grow darker in their second season and ultimately 

 become light grayish brown. The leaves, which stand out from all sides of the branchlets and point 

 forward, are strongly incurved near the middle, especially those on the upper side of the branch which 

 form a flatter and more compact mass of foliage than those on the lower side ; they are stout ri^id 

 tetragonal, acuminate at the apex, which terminates in a long callous sharp tip, from an inch to an inch 

 and an eighth long on the sterile branches of young vigorous trees, and often not more than half an 

 inch long on the fertile branches of old trees ; they are marked on each of their four sides with from 



