92 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



PICEA SITCHENSIS, Menzies' or Sitka Spruce' 



Picea sitchensis, Carribre, Traiti Conifer. 260 (1855); Trautvetter et Meyer, in Middendorff, Reise 

 Florula ochotensis, 87 (1856);* Sargent, Silva N. Atrurica, xii. 55, t. 602 (1898); Kent, in 

 Veitch's Man. Coniferee, 452 (1900). 



Picea Menziesii, Carrifere, Traite Conifer. 237 (1855); Masters, Gard. Chron. xxv. 728, figs. 161, 

 162 (1886). 



Picea sitkaensis, Mayr, Wald. N. Amerika, 338 (1890). 



Pinus sitchensis, Bongard, Vig. Sitcha, 46(1832). 



Abies Menziesii, Lindley, Penny Cycl. i. 32 (1833); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iv. 2321 (1838). 



Abies sitchensis, Lindley and Gordon, _/<?/. Hort. Soc. v. 212 (1850.) 



A tree, sometimes exceeding 200 feet in height, with a trunk 4 to 20 feet in 

 diameter, tapering above its enlarged and buttressed base ; in Alaska dwindling to 

 a low shrub. Bark with large, thin, red-brown scales. Branchlets yellow, shining, 

 glabrous. Buds ovoid, acute at the apex, with ovate obtuse scales. Leaves 

 arranged on lateral branchlets as in Picea aj'anensis, ending in sharp cartilaginous 

 points ; deeply keeled on the ventral green surface, and almost convex on the dorsal 

 surface, which has two white broad bands of stomata. The male catkins are solitary 

 at or near the ends of the branchlets, and are of an orange reddish colour. 



Cones : on short straight stalks, cylindrical-oval, blunt at the free end, 2^ to 4 

 inches long by i to i^ inches wide, composed of oblong or oblong-oval scales, 

 rounded towards the apex, denticulate and scarcely erose in margin ; bracts lanceolate, 

 denticulate, about half as long as the scales, and peeping out between them towards 

 the base of the cone. The cones when ripe are yellow or brown, and generally fall 

 off in the autumn and winter of the first year. Seeds, with a wing, three to four 

 times as long as the seed itself 



The Sitka spruce seems to vary considerably over its wide area. There are 

 specimens at Kew from the Columbia River, with pubescent young shoots, and 

 bearing small cones which have oval, not oblong, scales, and minute almost orbicular 

 bracts. Other specimens from Alaska have larger cones than usual, but with bracts 

 shorter than usual, and the leaves are not so deeply keeled or so sharp-pointed as in 

 the type. 



Cultivated trees are generally broadly pyramidal in outline, and when old, 

 often show the enlarged and buttressed base, so characteristic of wild trees ; the roots 

 sometimes extending superficially above the ground for several feet. The tree 

 often produces on its lateral branches small erect shoots, on which the leaves spread 

 radially in all directions. (A. H.) 



Identification. (See Picea hondoensis) 



' Called also Tideland spruce on the Pacific coast. 



* Trautvetter and Meyer are often cited as the authors of the name Picea sitchensis ; but the correct date of their 

 publication is later than that of Carri^re's. See Trautvetter, Flora Ressica Fontes, 303 (1880). 



