Lake Umbagog
1907.
August 16
  We have about the lake three species of spruces, the Red,
the White and the Black Spruce. Of these the species first 
named is by far the most abundant and also the most widely
distributed although it does not thrive in swamps or where
the land is subject to inundation. It has a loose straggling
habit when forest grown. Even when found in open pastures its
branches are usually unsymmetrical and comparatively widely spaced
excepting in very young plants some of which are as densely
branched as any White Spruce. The green of its foliage is
commonly tinged more or less strongly with olive and sometimes
appears almost pure olive but never shows any trace of bluish
or glaucous. The trunk is scaly-barked and of a grayish
brown color.
Spruces
Red Spruce
  The White Spruce loves swampy places and attains its
its finest proportions where the surface soil is habitually wet
and regularly inundated in spring. It seems to thrive best
in rich bottom lands such as those along Cambridge River
between the mill and the forks, where it occurs very numerously
and where I have seen trees at least seventy or eighty feet
in height. It is found only sparingly if at all on well
drained slopes covered with primitive forest but where hilly and
perfectly dry ground has been cleared and devoted to pasturage
it often springs up very commonly among the still more
numerous Red Spruces and Balsam Firs. In dense, damp
forest it sends up a narrow, slightly tapering or perhaps
almost perfectly columnar head often above the tops of all
the surrounding trees. In such situations it is more thickly 
branched than any of the Red Spruces or Balsams and its
foliage is always tinged with blueish. The young trees growing in
open pastures are branched quite to the ground and very broad
White Spruce