34 Illustrations of Conifers. 



PICEA ALBA (Link}. WHITE SPRUCE. 



Gardeners' Chronicle, Vol. XI. p. 384 (1879). 

 Veitch's Man. Com/, ed. 2, p. 427 (1900). 



A TREE varying in] height and habit according to its situation, attain- 

 ing a height of 60 to 70 feet with a trunk 6 feet in girth, but 

 reduced in its northern limit to a mere shrub. Bark thin, greyish- 

 brown and scaly. 



Branchlets whitish-brown, glabrous. Buds about inch long or 

 less, with chestnut-brown scales. Leaves persistent four to five years, 

 crowded on the upper side of the branchlets, spreading, pale green 

 or glaucous, with an unpleasant smell when bruised, - 1 inch long, 

 quadrangular in section, mucronate, with stomata on all four sides. 



Cones sessile, cylindric, obtuse, 1^-2 inches long and -f inch 

 in diameter ; scales loosely imbricated when mature, sub-orbicular, 

 pale brown, very thin and flexible. 



This spruce has a very wide distribution in North America ex- 

 tending as far as the northern tree limit, nearly to the Arctic Sea, 

 and reaching Behring Strait in Alaska south of the Dominion boundary ; 

 it extends southwards to the New England states, New York, Michigan, 

 Wisconsin and Dakota. According to Sargent the wood is light, soft 

 and straight-grained, with a satiny surface. 



Aiton states that Picea alba was introduced about the year 1700 

 when it was cultivated at Fulham by Bishop Compton. 



The Bayfordbury specimen which has attained a height of 38 feet 

 was planted in 1850. 



