38 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



not more than 2 in diameter, long comparatively thick branches densely clothed with 

 stout rigid laterals sweeping out in graceful upward curves, and forming a broad-based 

 rather open pyramid often obtuse at the apex, stout glabrous branchlets orange-brown 



during their first au- 

 tumn and winter, 

 gradually growing 

 darker grayish brown. 

 Whiter-buds broadly 

 ovoid, obtuse, cov- 

 ered by light chest- 

 nut-brown scales with 

 thin often reflexed 

 ciliate margins. Bark 

 \'-\' thick, separat- 

 ing irregularly into 

 thin plate-like light 

 gray scales more or 

 less tinged with brown. 

 Wood light, soft, 

 Fig. 41 not strong, straight- 



grained light yellow, 



with hardly distinguishable sapwood; manufactured into lumber in the eastern provinces 

 of Canada and in Alaska, and used in construction, for the interior finish of buildings, 

 and for paper-pulp. 



Distribution. Banks and borders of streams and lakes, ocean cliffs, and in the north the 

 rocky slopes of low hills, from Labrador along the northern frontier of the forest nearly 

 to the shores of the Arctic Sea, reaching Behring Strait in 66 44' north latitude, and south- 

 ward down the Atlantic coast to southern Maine, northern New Hampshire, Vermont, and 

 New York, shores of Saginaw Bay, Michigan, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, and 

 through the interior of Alaska. 



The variety (var. albertiana Sarg.) of the Gaspe Peninsula and the valleys of the Black 

 Hills of South Dakota and of the Rocky Mountains of northern Wyoming, Montana, 

 Alberta and northward, is a tree with a narrow pyramidal head, sometimes 150 high, with 

 a trunk 3 to 4 in diameter, and shorter and rather broader cones than those of the typical 

 White Spruce of the east, although not shorter or as short as the cones of that tree in the 

 extreme north. 



Often planted in Canada, northern New England, and northern Europe as an orna- 

 mental tree; in southern New England and southward suffering from heat and dryness. 



4. Picea Engelmannii Engelm. White Spruce. Engelmann Spruce. 

 Leaves soft and flexible, with acute callous tips, slender, nearly straight or slightly in- 

 curved on vigorous sterile branches, stouter, shorter, and more incurved on fertile branches, 

 l'-H' long, marked on each face by 3-5 rows of stomata, covered at first with a glaucous 

 bloom, soon becoming dark blue-green or pale steel-blue. Flowers: male dark purple; 

 female bright scarlet, with pointed or rounded and more or less divided scales, and oblong 

 bracts rounded or acute or acuminate and denticulate at apex or obovate-oblong and 

 abruptly acuminate. Fruit oblong-cylindric to ellipsoidal, gradually narrowed to the 

 ends,, usually about 2' long, sessile or very short-stalked, produced in great numbers on the 

 upper branches, horizontal and ultimately pendulous, light green somewhat tinged with 

 scarlet when fully grown, becoming light chestnut-brown and lustrous, with thin flexible 

 slightly concave scales, generally erose-dentate or rarely almost entire on the margins, 

 usually broadest at the middle,wedge-shaped below, and gradually contracted above into 

 a truncate or acute apex, or occasionally obovate and rounded above; mostly deciduous 

 in the autumn or early in their first winter soon after the escape of the seeds ; seeds obtuse 



