432 ' PICEA EXCELSA. 



of eastern Nevada, and on Mounts Francisco and Graham in Arizona. 

 The wood is light, soft, close and straight-grained, but not strong ; where 

 accessible it is used for all kinds of constructive work especially in 

 Colorado and Utah. The bark is locally used for tanning.* 



Picea En<jelmanni was first specifically distinguished by Dr. C. C. 

 Parry, who discovered it on Pike's Peak in Colorado in 1862 ; it was 

 introduced into Great Britain shortly afterwards, probably in 1865. 

 Apparently, seedlings have been raised in numbers so restricted that 

 this Fir is still but seldom seen in this country. The variety 

 described in the former edition as P. Engelmanni glauca does not 

 belong to this species but to P. pungens : seedlings of P. Engelmanni 

 with a highly glaucous foliage occasionally appear in the seed beds, 

 but they may be distinguished from P. pungens by their softer, less 

 rigid and far less pungent leaves, which emit an unpleasant odour 

 when bruised. 



The nearest affinity of Picea Engelmanni is P. alba ; the former is 

 essentially a tree of the mountains, the latter inhabits the woods and 

 sand-hills of the plains. Distinct as they appear when growing side 

 by side in a British nursery, it is not easy to formulate the characters 

 by which they are specifically separated ; the most obvious differences 

 are seen in the cones and their scales. So closely do they sometimes 

 resemble each other that, according to Professor Macoun, in northern 

 Columbia the one merges into the other, the two being indistinguishable.! 

 P. Engelmanni commemorates one of the ablest and most respected 

 American botanists of his time. 



GEORGE ENGELMANN (1809 1884) was born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, where his 

 father was a clergyman and master of a school. He entered the University of 

 Heidelburg in 1827, but in the following year removed to Berlin University where 

 he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1831. He soon afterwards went to 

 America and established himself at St. Louis, where he resided during the remainder 

 of his life, being chiefly engaged in the practice of medicine, but devoting much of 

 his spare time to botany. He helped forward in divers ways the botany of his 

 adopted land ; in the Conifene, the Oaks, Agaves and other genera, he became looked 

 up to as the leading authority. At a time of life when most people would have 

 preferred to remain at home, he visited the great forests of the West in company 

 with three other eminent scientists, w T here fifty years previously Douglas had collected 

 so many Conifers for the Horticultural Society of London. Much remained to be 

 cleared up respecting these trees ; their nomenclature and synonomy were under 

 constant discussion with constantly varying results. Engelmann was enabled to 

 gather many of the Conifers in the very localities indicated by Douglas, and to 

 study their distribution and modifications as they diverged in one direction or 

 another, or occupied different stations from the coast to the slopes of the mountains. 

 He occasionally visited this country where his aid w r as sought in settling questions 

 of nomenclature, as may be seen from the notes and memoranda with which he 

 enriched the national herbarium at Kew. Gardeners' Chronicle, XXI. (1884), p 321. 



Picea excelsa. 



A lofty tree, in places attaining a height of 125 150 feet, with a 

 trunk 3 5 feet in diameter ; the average height of full-grown trees 

 in Great Britain ranges from 60 to 100 feet, according to locality and 

 environment. In early age the bark is thin, smooth and of a 

 reddish brown colour ; later it becomes fissured into thin scales that 

 are eventually cast off. Branches slender, in regular pseudo-whorls from 

 * Silva of North America, XII. 45. t Catalogue of Canadian Plants, 470. 



