The Spruces 



bracts ending in recurved, whip-like points. Preferred habitat, 

 moist soil of coast plain. Distribution, Rocky Mountains from 

 British America into Mexico; west to Pacific coast, except in the 

 Great Basin (between Wasatch and Sierra Nevada Mountains). 

 Uses: Valuable lumber tree for shipbuilding, piles, posts and rail- 

 road ties. Bark used to some extent for tanning. 



He who would see for himself the most magnificent forests 

 this continent holds to-day must go to the redwoods in California. 

 When these groves have awed him with the tremendous bulk of 

 timber in board feet they can yield in a single acre, let him move 

 up the coast to where the moist Japan current breathes upon the 

 evergreen forests of the Cascade's western slope. There are giant 

 cedars and firs and hemlocks; and dominating all of them is the 

 Douglas spruce. 



" It is not only a large tree, the tallest in America next to the 

 redwood, but a very beautiful one with bright green, drooping 

 foliage, handsome pendant cones, and a shaft, exquisitely straight 

 and round and regular." 



The trees make a very even growth and stand together as 

 closely as the stalks in a well-tilled field of grain. Excluding 

 other kinds, these trees stand with their heads together, making 

 the forest dark as night below. Far up the Alaskan coast the 

 Douglas spruce extends, and eastward across mountain ranges, 

 where it mingles with yellow pines in sunny, open forests, where 

 the trees have opportunity to show the grace of their pendant 

 limbs and the beauty of their red cone flowers and the ruddy cones 

 adorned with pale green bracts. A small cone it is for so large a 

 tree, yet one to remember for its beauty. 



The Douglas spruce is known as "Oregon pine" in the lum- 

 ber markets of the coast. The Puget Sound region furnishes 

 spars of it to every great shipyard in the world. They are used 

 as piles in wharves in Western harbours. Shipbuilders, bridge- 

 builders — everybody who needs heavy timbers of great durability, 

 toughness and hardness — desire this kind if it can be had. The 

 best grades of it are stronger than the wood of any other large 

 conifer in America. Its faults for general lumber purposes are 

 its hardness and its tendency to warp in boards. 



The Douglas spruce as seen in nurseries is the quickest- 

 growing evergreen of all. Immense quantities of seed are sent 

 to Europe, where the tree is grown both for ornament and for tim- 



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