1344 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



IV. Several varieties are known in which the leaves are coloured : 



1 8. Var. aurea, Carriere, Conif. 246 (1855). 



Leaves yellowish white, shining. The golden spruce has been found wild in 

 Carinthia. 



19. Var. finedonensis, Gordon, Pinet. Supp. 4 (1862). 



Leaves pale yellow at first, changing to a bronze colour, and ultimately be- 

 coming green. 1 This originated at Finedon Hall, Northamptonshire, where it came 

 up accidentally in a bed of common spruce. It often loses its colour in cultivation, 

 and at Colesborne has entirely reverted to the normal green. Var. mutabilis ! has 

 the young shoots creamy yellow in colour, changing to green by the end of the season. 

 Mr. Bean 8 saw in Hesse's nursery, Weener, Hanover, a very beautiful variety, with 

 creamy white young shoots, which is called var. argenteo-spica. 



20. Var. variegata, Carriere, Conif. 246(1855). 



Leaves variegated with pale yellow. A variegated form is mentioned by 

 Loudon ; and Wittrock 4 found a tree with leaves variegated white at Helsingfors. 



V. The colour of the bark of the common spruce varies from whitish grey to 

 brown, probably due to influence of soil and climate. The following sports have 

 been observed. 



31. Var. corticata, Schroter, op. cit. 184 (1898). 



Bark thick, up to 3^ in., longitudinally fissured, and resembling that of a pine 

 in external appearance, though in microscopical structure like the ordinary spruce. 

 Schroter knew in 1898 only six spruces with thick bark, occurring in Austria, 

 Bohemia, Hesse, Bavaria, and Switzerland ; but more than twenty are now known 5 

 in the latter country alone. 



22. Var. tuberculata, Schroter, op. cit. 190 (1898). 



Lower part of the stem covered with corky excrescences, projecting about an 

 inch above the surface of the bark, where side branches are given off. 6 Four examples 

 only were known to Schroter in 1898, two in Austria, one in Bavaria, and one in Swit- 

 zerland ; but Badoux 6 states that many more have since been found in Switzerland. 



VI. In addition to the varieties and sports just described, which are of unknown 

 origin, there are many peculiar forms of the, spruce which are due to external in- 

 fluences, and which cannot, properly speaking, be named varieties or sports. 



1. The candelabra spruce is often produced, when the leading shoot is broken 

 off by the force of the wind or by other causes. A whorl of secondary branches 

 becomes erect below the broken part of the stem, and forming a series of leaders, 

 grows up, giving the tree a candelabra-like appearance. 



2. Dwarf spruces, 7 which are mere bushes, with irregular branches, dense 



1 Fowler, in Card. Chron. 1872, p. 76, speaks of the inconstancy of the colour in different parts of the tree. 



* Cf. Masters, in Gard. Chron. vii. 578 (1890). * A'ew. Bull. 1908, p. 391. 



4 In Hartman, Skand. Flora, 35 (1889). 



4 Badoux, in/ourn. Forest. Suisse, 1907, quoted by Beissner, in Mitt. Deul. Detid. Ges. 1910, p. 122. 



6 Cf. Cieslar, in Centralblatt Gesamte Forstwesen, xx. Heft 4, pp. 145-149 (1894). Schroter compares these corky 

 excrescences with those developed on the stems of Zanthoxylum, studied by Barber, in Ann. Bot. vi. 155 (1892). 



' Picea ellipsoconis, Borbas, Magyar Bot. Lapok, i. 26 (1902), a shrub-like spruce growing as scrub near tree-limit in 

 the western Carpathians, with short broad cones, is considered by Pax, in Pflansenverb. Karpathcn, ii. 177 (1908), to owe its 

 peculiarities to the high altitude, similar shrubs being recorded for the eastern Alps by Beck. 





