The Spruces 



into North Carolina. It has the spruce habit, but it rarely sacri- 

 fices its lower limbs even when crowded. In height these trees 

 range from 75 to 100 feet, with trunks 2 to 3 feet in diameter. 

 The wood is used for lumber and paper pulp. It is peculiarly 

 adapted for sounding boards of musical instruments, and makes 

 excellent flooring. It is occasionally cultivated, but other species 

 are usually preferred. Its twigs are boiled to make spruce beer. 



White Spruce {Picea Canadensis, B. S. & P.) — Broadly 

 pyramidal tree, 60 to 150 feet high, with stout branches, smooth 

 twigs and bad-smelling foliage. Bark greyish brown, break- 

 ing into scaly plates. Wood light, soft, yellow, brittle. Buds 

 ovate, scaly. Leaves spread on upper side of twig, bluish, 

 sharp, hoary when young, ^ to f inch long. Flowers both 

 kinds cone -like, pale red, turning yellow. Fruit oblong- 

 cylindrical, stalked cones, blunt ; scales blunt or notched at broad 

 apex, shiny, thin, falling soon after seeds ripen. Preferred habi- 

 tat, rocky slopes, banks of rivers or lakes. Distribution, Labra- 

 dor to Bering Strait ; south to Montana, northern Dakota, 

 Michigan and Wisconsin, New York and New England. Uses: 

 Lumber for building and interior finishing, and for paper pulp. 

 Tree planted for ornament and shade. Variety ca^rulea most 

 common in cultivation. 



The pale bark and pea-green foliage of the white spruce en- 

 able one to account for its name without difficulty and to identify 

 it in the woods. The whitish wood is not distinctly paler than 

 that of the black spruce. The ill-smelling foliage and the smooth 

 twigs better distinguish it, and the cones, which are twice as 

 long as the black spruce's. They are shed almost as soon as 

 they open, a tree habit that keeps the branches clean and thrifty 

 in appearance. 



White spruce is the pulp manuHicturer's delight. He owns 

 thousands of acres of it. As lumber the wood is used only in 

 Alaska and Canada in lieu of better kinds. The inferiority of 

 spruce lumber has saved it for the comparatively new enterprise 

 of pulp manufacture. 



Blue Spruce {Picea Parryana, Sarg.) — Handsome tree, 80 

 to 125 feet high, broadly pyramidal ; branches rigid, horizontal, 

 in remote whorls. Bark grey, thick, broken into rounded, 

 .<;caly ridges ; on young trees often reddish, in oblong plates. 

 ]Vood light, fine grained, soft, weak, pale. Buds stout, blunt, 



66 



