Lake Umbagog.
1907.
August 16 
at the base. Their foliage, as a rule, is more uniformly dense
than that of any other evergreen found in New England. It
is usually bluish but in the paler colored specimens not more so
than in many vigorous young Balsams for which, indeed, young
White Spruces may be easily mistaken when seen at a distance.
But the bluer trees of the latter species are unmistakeable
and sometimes almost as if not quite as blue as the finest
Colorado Spruces. At least this seems to be true of some
which are before my eyes as I sit writing these notes in
a hill pasture near Lakeside. Their trunks, as I notice,
have a decided rusty-yellowish or flesh colored tinge not
seen in the young Red Spruces which grow among them
and which have brownish stems perhaps slightly but
never conspicuously tinged with reddish. I think the trunks
of old forest grown White Spruces are commonly much
redder than those of Red spruces but this impression I
cannot verify here as there are no specimens of the
former at hand for comparison.
White Spruce
  In the region about Umbagog the Black Spruce appears
to be wanting on the shores of the lake, on the banks of
its connecting rivers and throughout the upland forests.
Indeed I have found it only in those flat, ill-drained, partly
open spaces, locally known as bogs, where the cold, sour
surface soil is saturated with water at every season and
thickly carpeted with moss. Here it grows commonly
enough in company, perhaps, with Arbor vitae or Larches
but rarely in close association with other kinds of trees.
It has dark somewhat bluish green foliage and seldom rises to a greater height than thirty or forty
feet. In shape it is not unlike the White Spruce but
it usually tapers more rapidly towards the top and is