84 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
Sp. 3. Tse Sinere on Waite Spruce. Abies alba. Michaux. 
Figured in Lambert’s Pinus ; Plate 37. 
Michaux ; Sylva, III, Plate 148. 
This is a more slender and tapering tree of the swamps, 
marked by the light color of the bark and hghter green of the 
leaves. It rarely rises to the height of forty or fifty feet. It 1s 
perfectly straight, with numerous, somewhat irregularly scat- 
tered branches, forming a head of the same shape as that of the 
double spruce, but less broad, and with foliage of a less gloomy 
color, whence its name. 'The bark is of a light brown, some~- 
what roughened by scales an inch broad and of somewhat 
greater length. 
The shoots are slender, of a light brown or yellowish color, 
the bark seeming to be made up, as in the other species, of small 
roundish ridges formed of the footstalks of the leaves extending 
downwards and ending ataleaf below. ‘The leaves are of a 
light bluish green, in spirals rather closely set, and equally on 
all sides of the shoot. On the horizontal! branchlets, the short 
footstalks of the leaves on the under side are so bent as to bring 
all the leaves to the upper half of the branch. 'The leaves 
usually fall off in two or three years, leaving a scaly surface 
bristling with the short persistent footstalks. These gradually 
disappear and the loose scales enlarge with the growth of the 
branch. 
The root is remarkable for its toughness, and from it the 
Canadian Indians make the threads with which they sew 
together the birch-bark for their canoes. 
‘The cones, which are pale green when young, and afterwards 
pale brown, vary in size extremely. As they grow here, they 
are from three-quarters of an inch to one and one-half inches 
long, nearly cylindrical in shape, or somewhat tapering, with 
rounded ends. In Canada, they are often three inches long. 
The scales are close set and perfectly smooth and entire on their 
edge. 
The single spruce is thought to possess the excellent proper- 
ties of the other species in an equal degree, and is preferred, 
