182 THE SPRUCES 



slow growth does not indicate success. If plants are to be 

 grown in a nursery, humus from the woods would best be 

 compounded with the soil of the seed-bed. The young plants 

 should be screened from the sun the same as other conifers, 

 and substantially the same treatment be given them. As 

 they are light-demanding, close planting in the forest will 

 cause their lower limbs to die and the trees will become 

 suitable for commercial purposes. The cones should be 

 gathered and treated like those of the White Pine. 



WHITE SPRUCE: Picea canadensis 



THE White Spruce ranges along the northern border of 

 the United States from Idaho to Maine, but not farther 

 south than South Dakota, southern Minnesota, Wisconsin, 

 northern New York, southern Maine, and northern New 

 Hampshire and Vermont, growing along the shore much 

 farther south than in the interior, except on the AUeghany 

 Mountains, where it reaches northern Virginia. Its extended 

 area in Canada has given it its botanical name canaden- 

 sis, which is entirely appropriate. It constitutes the great 

 bulk of the forests of Alaska and northern Canada, reach- 

 ing far into the Frigid Zone, where it grows on the tun- 

 dras that are never free from frost. It is essentially a cold- 

 climate tree and a southern extension of its range need never 

 be expected. Its best development in the eastern United 

 States is in northern New England, but it seldom attains 

 a great size. Professor Sargent, 1 in speaking of it east of 

 the Rocky Mountains, says: "Toward the southeastern 

 limits of its range rarely more than sixty to seventy feet 

 tall, with a trunk not more than two feet in diameter." It 

 averages somewhat larger in Idaho. It is a slow grower, 

 but long-lived. Its general characteristics of growth in the 

 Eastern States and the uses to which the wood is put are 

 so like those of the Red Spruce that a detailed description 

 of it need not be given, except to say that its heartwood 

 1 Manual of the Trees of North America, page 42. 



