CONIFERS 151 



Continental coasts, but you cannot expect Western trees to live long in 

 an Eastern country or Eastern in a Western. For example, England 

 can grow the Douglas spruce and other gigantic conifers of the 

 Pacific coast to perfection, and California can grow most of the 

 European trees. Thus the Pacific coast, though socially related 

 to us, is climatically akin to Europe. 



Again, the Calif ornian form of the Douglas spruce is not hardy in 

 the East, but its Colorado form is. We could wish that all the 

 California conifers had been able to cross the Great Divide, so 

 that the East might hope to have hardy forms of all these 

 titanic trees. One should never buy Douglas spruces without 

 inquiring whether they came from the California or Colorado 

 stock. 



Botanically, the Douglas spruce belongs to a different genus 

 (Pseudotsuga}, but for landscape purposes it is a spruce. It is the 

 best spruce England can have, both for ornament and for timber. 

 It will grow sixty feet in forty years in England, and occasionally 

 three feet a year. 



The spruce on which America has wasted the most money (doubt- 

 less more than a million dollars in the past) is the Norway (Picea 

 excelsa). This is the blackest and gloomiest of conifers and the 

 chief source of the notion (where it exists) that evergreens are 

 monotonous and depressing. One of our worst American traits 

 is that we buy the things that are cheapest at first instead of 

 cheapest in the end. The Norway spruce is the lowest priced 

 conifer because it is the fastest grower and like nearly all other 

 fast growers it is short-lived. It makes a splendid appearance in 

 the nursery, but soon gets shabby. The best dark-coloured spruce 

 that is always radiantly happy in our climate is the Oriental 

 (Picea orientalis). 



