4S SILVA OF NOETH AMERICA. coNiFEEiE. 



four to seven rows o£ stomata, more conspicuous on the upper than on the lower surface, and when 

 they first appear are dull bluish green on some individuals and light or dark steel-blue or silvery white 

 on others, the blue colors gradually changing to a dull blue-green at the end of three or four years. 

 The staminate flowers are oblong-ovate, from one half to five eighths of an inch long and about one 

 third of an inch thick, with yellow anthers tinged with red. The pistillate flowers are oblong-cylindrical 

 and an inch in length, with broad oblong or slightly obovate scales which are pale green, truncate or 

 slightly emarginate at the denticulate apex, and acute bracts. The cones are produced on the upper 

 third of the tree and are sessile or short-stalked, oblong-cylindrical, shghtly narrowed at the ends, and 

 usually about three inches long, varying, however, from two to four inches in length and from an inch 

 to an inch and a half in thickness, with flat tough rhomboidal scales which are flexuose on the margins, 

 and acute, rounded, or truncate at the elongated erose apex, green more or less tinged with red when 

 fully grown at midsummer, and slightly spreading after they open early in the autumn, when they are 

 pale chestnut-brown and lustrous ; they mostly do not fall from the branches until their second winter. 

 The seeds are an eighth of an inch long and about half the length of their wings, which gradually 



widen to above the middle and are full and rounded at the apex. 



Picea Parryana grows along the banks of streams and on the first benches above them singly 

 or in small groves at elevations of between six thousand five hundred and nine thousand or occa- 

 sionally ten thousand feet above the sea-level. Nowhere very abundant, it is generally scattered 

 along the mountain streams of Colorado and eastern Utah, and northward to those of the Wind River 

 Mountains of Wyoming. 



The wood of Picea Parryana is very light, soft, weak, and close-grained, with a satiny surface; 



it is very light brown or often nearly white, with hardly distinguishable sapwood, and contains numerous 

 prominent medullary rays, few small resin passages, and inconspicuous bands of small summer cells. 

 The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.374:0, a cubic foot weighing 23.31 pounds. 



Picea Parryana was discovered on Pike's Peak, Colorado, in 1862, by Dr. C. C. Parry, whose 

 name it bears, and by whom seeds were sent the following year to the Botanic Garden of Harvard 

 University at Cambridge. In the gardens of the eastern and northern United States and in those of 

 the central prairie region of the continent, and of western and northern Europe, Picea Parryana has 

 proved very hardy and has grown rapidly; its handsome pyramidal habit, with regularly whorled 

 branches and broad frond-Hke masses of crowded leaves, and the blue color of the foliage on the young 

 branches of some individuals, have commended it to the lovers of ornamental trees, and no conifer of 



^^ J ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ 



recent introduction has been so generally planted in the United States during the last twenty years.' 

 The bluest individuals lose, however, at the end of a few years much of their peculiar color ; and the 

 feeble growth of the lower branches on the oldest trees in cultivation, now thirty or forty feet in height, 

 show that those branches will soon perish, and that Picea Parryana^ although charming in its early 

 years, is less well suited to become a permanent ornament of parks and gardens than trees which, 

 producing more vigorous lower branches, maintain to old age the conical form, perfect from the ground 

 up, which is essential to the greatest beauty of conifers of pyramidal habit.^ 



^ In European gardens varietal names have been attached to 345), who also describes a plant with pendulous branches as Picea 



r 



seedling plants of Picea Parryana differing slightly in color from pungens glauca pendula, 



what is considered to be the typical form, but none of them have A long-leaved vigorous seedling plant raised in Germany is 



much value or significance, as seedlings of this tree are always described by Ledien as Picea pungens, var. Konig Albert von 



very variable and display innumerable tints in their foliage. Sachsen (^Gartenjiora, xl. 69, f. 22 [1891]). 



Several of the varieties are described by Beissner (Handb. Nadelh. ^ Garden and Forest^ iv. 190. 



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