SPRUCE. 



(Picea.} 



The spruces form forests in Europe and North America. 

 The black spruce (P. nigrd) and the white spruce (P. alba) 

 predominate in eastern United States, while the white spruce 

 (P. engclmanni} is important in the West. The Norway 

 spruce, or white fir (P. cxcelsa), is the chief European species. 

 American trees prefer Northern ranges characterized by short 

 summers and long winters. The red spruce (Picea rubens) is now, 

 by reason of the diminution of the supply of white pine in north- 

 ern New England, the most important timber tree of that district. 



The soft, clean, light, close-grained, satiny woods resemble, 

 and are the best Eastern substitutes for, white pine. Spruce is 

 the principal structural wood in many places in New England.- 

 It is also used for paper pulp. The valuable western spruces 

 are less familiar because of their distances from the best markets 

 and because of other woods for which considerable demands 

 have already been established. The eastern product is divided 

 commercially and according to appearance, but irrespective of 

 species, into white and black spruce. These terms depend some- 

 times, at least, on the wide and narrow rings of the black spruce 

 (P. nigra). It should be remembered that spruce and fir woods 

 are often confused with one another, and that there are trees, as 

 the Douglas spruce and Kauri pine or spruce, that are called, but 

 are not, true spruces. European spruce is often locally known 

 as white deal. 



Spruce trees have single, sharp-pointed, short leaves, 

 pointing everywhere, and keeled above and below so as to 

 appear four-sided; the cones hang down. Spruce may be dis- 

 tinguished from the pines, firs, and hemlocks by the fact that 

 pine leaves are longer and in clusters, that hemlock leaves are 

 flat, blunt, and two-ranked, and that fir cones point upward. 

 The genus picea has twelve species, five of which are North 

 American. The resins of the black and red spruce are used 

 as confections. 



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