56 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. conifers. 



r 



The bark of tlie trunk is from one quarter to one half of an Inch in thickness, and is broken on the 

 surface into large thin loosely attached dark red-brown or, on young trees, sometimes bright cinnamon- 

 red scales. The winter-buds are ovate and acute or conical and from one quarter to nearly one half of 

 an inch in length, with pale chestnut-brown lustrous scales which are ovate, acute and sometimes tipped 

 with short mucros, scarious on the margins and often more or less reflexed above the middle. The 

 branchlets are stout, rigid, glabrous and pale green when they first appear, becoming light or dark 

 orange-brown during their first autumn and winter, and then gradually turn dark gray-brown. The 

 leaves stand out from all sides of the branches, often nearly at right angles to them, and frequently bring 

 their white upper surface to view by a twist at their base, and are straight or slightly incurved, acute or 

 acuminate, with elongated callous tips ; they are slightly rounded on the lower surface, which is green 

 and lustrous and occasionally marked, especially on the leaves of leading shoots and fertile branches, 

 with two or three rows of small inconspicuous stomata on each side of the prominent midrib, and on the 

 upper surface they are flattened, obscurely ridged, and almost covered with broad silvery white bands 

 of numerous rows of stomata ; in length they vary from half ah inch on fertile branches to an inch and 

 an eighth on vigorous lower branches and in width from one sixteenth to one twelfth of an inch. 

 The staminate flowers are produced in great quantities toward the ends of the pendent lateral 

 branchlets, and are oblong-cylindrical, dark red, short-stalked, surrounded at the base by the much 

 enlarged bud-scales which form conspicuous involucres around both the male and female flowers^ 

 from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half in length and often half an inch in thickness. 

 The pistillate flowers are borne on the rigid terminal shoots of the branches of the upper half of 

 the tree and are oblong-cylindrical, about an inch long and half an inch thick, with nearly orbicular 

 denticulate scales often slightly truncate above and completely hidden by their elongated acuminate 

 bracts. The cones hang on short straight stalks and are cyhndrical-oval, usually from two and a half 

 to four inches in length and from an inch to an inch and a half in thickness, with thin stiff oblong- 

 oval scales rounded toward the apex, denticulate above the middle and nearly twice as long as their 

 lanceolate denticulate rigid bracts 3 when fully grown at midsummer the cones are yellow-green, often 

 tinged with dark red, especially on the side exposed to the sun, and at maturity they are lustrous, pale 

 yellow or reddish brown, and fall mostly during their first autumn and winter and soon after the 

 escape of the seeds. These are full and rounded, acute at the base, pale reddish brown, and about 

 an eighth of an inch long, with narrow oblong only slightly oblique wings from one half to one third 

 of an inch in length, and four or five cotyledons which are three-sided, the two upper sides being 

 concave and stomatiferous and the lower rounded. 



Picea Bitchensis usually inhabits moist sandy and often swampy soil, or, less frequently at the far 

 north, wet rocky slopes. Maintaining itself farther to the northwest than any other coniferous tree of 

 the Pacific forests, Picea Sitche7isis forms groves on the eastern end of Kadiak Island in longitude 

 ISl'' west, and extends southward through all the coast region of Alaska^ and British Columbia 

 west of the coast ranges,^ and through western Washington and Oregon to Mendocino County in 

 California.^ Small and stunted, and sometimes only a shrub toward the extreme northwestern limits of 

 its range, it becomes on the coast of southeastern Alaska, where its principal companion is the western 

 Hemlock, the largest and most abundant tree in this part of the great coniferous forest which stretches 

 from Cross Sound to Cape Mendocino, growing at the sea-level often to a height of more than a hun- 

 dred feet and ascending to elevations of three thousand feet, but decreasing in size as it ascends or leaves 

 the immediate neighborhood of the ocean.* Very abundant in the northern coast region of British 



1 Rothrock, Smithsonian Rep, 1867,433,455 (Fl, Alaska). — Mee- ^ The most southern point from which I have seen specimens of 

 han, Proc. Phil. Acad. six. 92. — F. Kurtz, Bot Jahrh. xix. 425 (Fl. Picea Sitchensis is Caspar, on the coast of Mendocino County, Cali- 

 Chilcatgiehetes). — Funston, Contrih. U. S. Nat. Herb. iii. 328. fornia. The cones from this locality are the smallest 1 have seen, 



2 G. M. Dawson, Can. Nat. n. ser. ix. 326. — Macoun, Cat. Can. heing only an inch and a half long. 



PI. 470. 



^ See Gorman, Pittoniay iii. 67. 



