PICEA 25 



leaves flat, 8-13 mm. long, short petioled, scattered, but twisted so as to 

 appear two-ranked, dark green above, white beneath; pistillate cones 

 small, ovoid, 1.5 to 2.5 cm. long: canadensis, Canadian. 



Coniferous forests, usually in acid soil containing considerable or- 

 ganic matter, from Nova Scotia to Delaware and southward along the 

 Alleghanies, westward through northern Michigan and Wisconsin in 

 which State it is abundant. The hemlock barely reaches Minnesota, 

 occurring native just southwest of the head of Lake Superior. 



Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree or as an evergreen hedge ; 

 neither the dry autumns nor the prevailing limestone soils of Minnesota 

 suit the hemlock and it is apt to die out after a few years. In Upper 

 Michigan and Wisconsin it is a valuable timber tree much used for coarse 

 lumber, piles, etc. Wood light reddish brown, soft, coarse, brittle and 

 splintering, weight 26 lb. The bark is extensively used in tanning leather. 



Picea Link 1827 Spruce 

 (L. picea spruce or fir tree, from p i x, pitch.) 



Trees with straight trunks running to the top of the crown, and 

 abundant, horizontal, drooping or slightly ascending branches; smaller 

 twigs clothed with closely set evergreen needle-like leaves arranged in a 

 close spiral; leaves usually four-sided, sharp pointed, spreading in all 

 directions from the twig, borne upon small woody projections which 

 render the twigs rough when the leaves fall (spruce and hemlock leaves 

 fall quickly when a twig is dried, fir and Douglas fir leaves are apt to 

 remain attached to the dried twig); buds scaly, not resinous; flowers 

 monoecious, the staminate solitary, lateral, consisting of an axis bearing the 

 numerous overlapping, scale-like stamens, each of which bears two pollen 

 sacs which open longitudinally; pollen winged as in pine; pistillate cones 

 usually borne laterally on the twigs with very short peduncles, drooping, 

 ripening the same year, dry and woody or membranous when ripe ; the seed- 

 bearing scales entirely concealing the small bracts; seeds winged, not 

 resinous, discharged from the ripe cones which often remain on the tree 

 for some time after the fall of the seeds, and finally fall off entire. 



A genus of about 14 species of the far northern and the mountainous 

 parts of the northern hemisphere. It includes the most boreal conifers in 

 the world. Besides the following there are in North America one eastern 

 and three western species. 



