28 PINE FAMILY 



Picea Abies (Linne) Karsten 1881 Norway Spruce 

 P. excelsa (Lamarck) Link 1841 



Large tree reaching in its native regions a height of 40 m. (135 ft.), 

 trunk straight, branches of moderate length, spreading, branchlets op- 

 posite, at first horizontal, but soon becoming drooping; bark scaly, red- 

 dish brown; twigs brown, smooth or hairy; leaves light green, four-sided, 

 15-25 cm., long; cones very long (12-15 cm.) and cylindrical, their 

 scales thin, firm, broad and usually with an irregular margin : a b i e s the 

 Latin name of the spruce or fir. 



Cultivated : a native of Europe where it grows from the extreme 

 north to the alpine regions of the Alps and Pyrenees. Flowering in 

 April, cones ripe the same autumn. 



More commonly planted for ornament than any other spruce, it is 

 hardy and grows rapidly, but is apt to be injured by hot dry summers, 

 and loses its beauty after thirty or forty years, by the dying of the lower 

 branches. 



Wood reddish or yellowish, soft, fine-grained, much used in Europe 

 for lumber for floors, boxes, cheap furniture, scaffolds, masts, spars, etc. 

 The oleoresin from this tree, "Burgundy pitch," is used medicinally; die 

 bark is used in tanning leather. 



Larix Ada n son 1763 Larch, Tamarack 

 (L. larix, larch tree.) 



Trees with a straight upright trunk, extending to the top of the tree, 

 and indistinctly whorled, spreading or ascending branches; leaves needle- 

 like, bright green, turning yellow and falling in autumn, upon the new 

 twigs borne singly in a close spiral, like the leaves of spruce, but upon 

 the older branches and the trunk borne in tassel-like tufts, "dwarf shoots," 

 which produce twenty to thirty leaves each year for many years; flowers 

 monoecious, staminate cones solitary, borne without accompanying leaves 

 on the sides of twigs and branches, globose or nearly so, the stamens two- 

 celled, opening longitudinally, pollen wingless; pistillate cones appearing 

 with the leaves in early spring, red or greenish, the ovule-bearing scales 

 shorter than the bract-scales, cones small, ripening and opening the first 

 autumn, but remaining on the tree throughout the winter, the seed bearing 

 scales in our species concealing the short bract-scales. Our only deciduous 

 conifers. Besides the following two there are six other species native 

 of western North America, Siberia and Japan. 



