December S, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



481 



at least, is common over large areas in northern Asia, 

 another grows only on the Himalayas, and three species 

 occur in Europe. In Picea are found some of the most 

 valuable timber-trees in the world, and in favorable climates 

 all the species are handsome and popular park-trees. 



The most commonly cultivated Spruce tree in the United 

 States is a native of northern and central Europe, the so-called 

 Norway Spruce, Picea Picea (ihe Picea excelsa of many 

 authors). This is the great timber Spruce of European sil- 

 viculturists, and in its native forests it is really a noble 

 tree, sometimes 1 20 feet in height, and clothed to the ground, 

 when not too crowded by its neighbors, with long grace- 

 fully curving branches furnished with elongated pendant 

 branchlets closely covered with dark green lustrous leaves. 

 Introduced into the United States early in the present cen- 

 tury, the Norway Spruce has proved very hardy in all the 

 northern and middle states, where it grows with vigor and 

 rapidity for thirty or forty years, when generally beginning 

 to fail at the top, it soon becomes thin and ragged in ap- 

 pearance, and healthy, vigorous Norway Spruces more 

 than fifty years old are uncommon in this country. The 

 introduction of this tree, as it has been planted here, 

 in enormous numbers, must be considered a misfor- 

 tune, for it is certainly not as well suited to our climate 

 as some of the native species which nurserymen usually 

 have neglected for this foreign tree, as, unfortunately, it 

 can be raised very cheaply from seeds. Growing rap- 

 idly and making a good appearance while young, the 

 Norway Spruce is popular, too, with those persons who 

 want to produce some immediate effect with their trees, 

 but do not realize that the vigorous young plants which 

 they admire in the nursery are almost sure to become long 

 before they have reached maturity such ugly ragged speci- 

 mens as now disfigure nearly every public park and private 

 estate in the northern part of this country. 



A geographical variety of this European Spruce (var. 

 medioxima) with shorter, thicker and more rigid leaves 

 marked by small bands of stomata, and shorter cones with 

 thin, delicate scales rounded at the apex, is described in 

 vol. ix., page 273, of this journal, by Dr. Christ, who points 

 out the relationship of this Swiss and northern alpine tree 

 with the Siberian Picea obovata. This interesting form 

 has never, I believe, been tried in our gardens, but 

 Picea obovata and its variety Schrenkiana are now grow- 

 ing slowly in the Arnold Arboretum, where they are not 

 particularly promising, although on the Altai Mountains, 

 in northern Siberia, Manchuria and northern China, coun- 

 tries with climates not very unlike that of our northern 

 states, these Spruces form vast continuous forests. 



As might have been expected in the case of a tree which 

 has been so much cultivated in nurseries, a large number 

 of curious seminal forms of the Norway Spruce have ap- 

 peared from time to time and can now often be seen in 

 gardens. Beissner, in his Handbuch der Nadelholskunde, 

 describes fifty-six of these varieties ; among them are some 

 excellent dwarf plants like the variety Gregoryana and the 

 variety Clanbrasiliana, which are often useful for the deco- 

 ration of small gardens. The varieties inversa and pendula 

 are interesting small trees with branches pendant to the 

 stems, and the variety monstrosa, with long straggling 

 snake-like branchlets covered with short bristling leaves 

 and destitute of lateral branchlets, is one of the most 

 curious and hideous of arborescent monstrosities. Several 

 of the other described varieties are hardly distinguishable 

 and others are merely juvenile forms which soon outgrow 

 their peculiarities. 



A much more valuable tree than the European Spruce 

 for New England is the White Spruce (Picea Canadensis). 

 This is the most boreal of the Spruces of eastern North 

 America, where it is distributed from within the Arctic 

 Circle to the northern borders of New England and New 

 York, northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, South 

 Dakota and northern Montana. This tree, which some- 

 times attains a height of one hundred and fifty feet, may 

 be distinguished by the strong fetid odor of the foliage, 



the dark blue-green color of the leaves and the slender 

 elongated cones, with thin rounded entire flexible scales. 

 The White Spruce is a tree of the north and displays its 

 greatest beauty only in cold countries, suffering in summer 

 in the middle states and even in southern New England 

 from the attacks of the red spider, which soon make the 

 foliage thin and shabby. East of Cape Cod, however, it 

 is the most beautiful of the Spruces which have been 

 thoroughly tested here, dense in habit with persistent 

 lower branches, and beautiful in color. Individuals vary 

 considerably in the color of the foliage, however, one of the 

 most distinct of these color forms being the tree with pale 

 blue leaves (var. ccerulea) which is particularly attractive. 

 Other forms with yellow leaves and with abbreviated or 

 slightly pendulous or erect branches are cultivated in 

 European collections None of those which I have seen 

 are particularly desirable or durable. 



The Red Spruce (Picea rubra), an Appalachian species 

 distributed from the valley of the lower St. Lawrence 

 River to North Carolina, although little known in gar- 

 dens and rarely planted, is a first-rate ornamental tree 

 which might well be used in the northern and middle 

 states instead of the Norway Spruce. The Red Spruce, 

 which has long been confounded with the Black Spruce (P. 

 Mariana, see Garden and Forest, vol. x., p. 62),isatall slender 

 tree frequently attaining the height of one hundred feet 

 with thin branches and dense dark green foliage. The Red 

 Spruce, which is the timber Spruce of New England, New 

 York and the middle states, is a slow-growing tree in the 

 forest, and it is not improbable that the oldest trees in New' 

 England belong to this species. I have had little opportunity 

 to observe this tree in cultivation ; the few planted trees, 

 however, which I have seen are healthy and well fur- 

 nished with branches and certainly have not grown very 

 rapidly. 



The Black Spruce is a smaller and more northern tree 

 and an inhabitant of swamps and low wet ground. With 

 the White Spruce it ranges to the Arctic Circle, and it is 

 more generally spread over the northern states than the 

 Red Spruce, which is confined to elevated regions except 

 east of Cape Cod, where it reaches the coast, and it does not 

 extend westward to the states bordering on the Great Lakes, 

 where the Black Spruce is very abundant. The Black 

 Spruce is a tree of rather open habit with blue-green foliage ; 

 in cultivation it soon becomes thin and shabby, and it is 

 probably the least desirable of all the Spruces which have 

 been fairly tested here as ornamental trees. Several 

 varieties are described by nurserymen with the dwarf 

 more or less compact habit or with the foliage marked 

 with yellow^ or white, which are common seminal phe- 

 nomena. None of these are particularly distinct or 

 interesting enough to preserve. 



Two Rocky Mountain Spruces discovered by Dr. C. C. 

 Parry in 1861 and first raised by Dr. Asa Gray in the 

 Harvard Botanic Garden, have proved hardy in the eastern 

 states. The first of these trees, Picea Engelmanni, which 

 is widely distributed from British Columbia to northern 

 Arizona, is one of the most beautiful of the Spruces. It is 

 a noble tree often a hundred and fifty feet in height with a 

 tall stem covered with light cinnamon-red scaly bark, and 

 pale blue acute soft leaves. This is the timber Spruce of 

 the high slopes of the Rocky Mountains, where it forms 

 great forests at elevations from eight thousand to eleven 

 thousand feet above the sea-level. Here in New England 

 Picea Engelmanni grows slowly, like most trees which have 

 been transplanted from high altitudes to the sea-level, 

 forming a handsome narrow and very compact pyramid 

 with its lower branches resting on the ground. The largest 

 trees have produced a few cones here. Unfortunately, 

 Picea Engelmanni begins to grow very early in the spring 

 and therefore it is frequently injured in western Europe by 

 spring frosts, although in northern Russia it appears to be 

 one of the hardiest and most valuable conifers. 



Picea Parryana (the Picea pungens of most authors), the 

 second Rocky Mountain species, ihe so-called Colorado 



