Handbook of Trees of the Noethekn States and Canada. 



This beautiful Spruce is restricted in its 

 natural home to the banks and vicinity of 

 mountain streams of Colorado, Wyoming and 

 Washington, between the altitudes of G500 and 

 10000 ft. In these localities it sometimes 

 attains in the forests a height of 100 or ex- 

 ceptionally 150 ft., with trunk 2-3 ft. in thick- 

 ness and narrow often irregular open top. 

 The isolated tree, however, especially in its 

 youth, possesses a rare and unique type of 

 beauty. Its branches grow out in symmetrical 

 whorls of flattened sprays longest near the 

 ground and successively shorter towards the 

 top, forming a perfect and beautiful pyramid. 

 This is farther enhanced by tlie massed foliage 

 of silvery blue or tints ranging from that to a 

 purplish blue or green, a single bed of seedlings 

 presenting perhaps the entire range. Its 

 beautiful form and color together with its 

 hardiness make it one of the most valuable 

 acquisitions for ornamental planting of recent 

 years. 



The wood of the Blue Spruce is light, a cu. 

 ft. weighing 23.31 lbs., soft, with satiny sur- 

 face and suitable for the uses mentioned of the 

 Red Spruce.2 



Leaves rigid, 4-sided, from % in. on fertile 

 branches to IV:, in. long on sterile, curved, spiny, 

 acuminate, bluish green to silvery or dull green ; 

 branchlets glabous. Floirers reddish yellow : pis- 

 tillate with broad denticulate scales and acute 

 bract. Fruit: cones subsessile, oblong-cylindrical, 

 2^4-4 in. long with glossy rhomboidal flexuose 

 scales narrow and erose-dentate at the elongated 

 apex ; seed % in. long with short wide wing.'' 



1. Syn. P. pungens Engelm. 



2. A. W., XI, 275. 



3. For genus see p. 420. 



