PINE FAMILY 
odor is rather unpleasant and this alone will often suffice to 
distinguish it from the Black Spruce. No other spruce grows 
more luxuriantly or is more ornamental in parks and lawns 
while in the vigor of youth, but as it becomes older it finds 
the mild climate of the northern states uncongenial and soon 
perishes or lives on in unsightly decrepitude. Resin exudes 
from cuts and gashes and hardens into a white gum. 
RED SPRUCE 
Picea rubens, 
A conical evergreen tree usually seventy toeighty feet high, occa- 
sionally one hundred feet, and upon its northern limit becoming a 
semi-prostrate shrub. Ranges from Nova Scotia to North Carolina 
and Tennessee. Grows slowly ; roots thick; resinous. 
Bark.—Reddish brown broken into thin irregular scales. Branch- 
lets at first stout, pale green, pubescent, later become bright reddish- 
brown or orange brown, finally becoming dark and scaly. 
Wood.—Pale, slightly tinged with red, sapwood paler; light, soft 
close-grained, with satiny surface. Used in construction and in 
production of wood pulp, also for sounding boards of musical in- 
struments. Sp. gr.,0.4516; weight of cu. ft., 28.13 lbs. 
Winter Buds.—Pale reddish brown, ovate, acute, one-fourth to 
one-third of an inch long. 
Leaves.—Linear, four-sided, tipped at apex with callous point, 
pale bluish green at first, dark shining green when mature ; midrib 
prominent ; one-half to five-eighths of aninch long; they stand out 
from all sides of the branch, point forward, and are more or less in- 
curved; jointed at the base to short, persistent sterigmata. 
Flowers.—April, May. Moncecious. Staminate flowers oval, 
almost sessile, one-half inch long ; anther crests bright red, toothed. 
Pistillate flowers, oblong, cylindrical, three-quarters of an inch long. 
Scales rounded, thin, erose at margin; bracts rounded and lacini- 
ate ; ovules two, naked on base of scale. 
Cones. —Ovate-oblong, light reddish brown, shining, apex gradu- 
ally acute, one and one-quarter to two inches long. Scales rounded, 
entire or slightly toothed, striate. Seeds dark brown; wings short 
and broad. 
The Red Spruce was for many years confounded with the 
Black Spruce; Protessor Sargent draws a wide distinction 
between them. 
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