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PARK AND CEMETERY 
Canadian-French prepare a spruce l)eer. It is very 
variable, growing to 70 feet high in cold bleak hill 
regions, such as the Adirondacks, where glaucous 
forms are not uncommon. On the high peaks it be- 
Courtesy Mr. Samuel Moon. 
PICEA EXCELSA, INVERTA. 
comes dwarf and very dense in growth. P. nigra 
often becomes prematurely unlovely, especially when 
covered with persistent cones. P. rubra is a better 
form, much like some varieties of the common spruce, 
but with much smaller cones. It too becomes 70 or 
80 feet tall, dwarfing to a mere shrub at the extreme 
north and at great elevations, where glaucous forms 
are common. 
P. alba stretches across North America from New- 
foundland and Maine to British Columbia and the 
Western Yukon. It often seems to prefer moist or 
even wet places along the borders of mountain lakes 
or rivers, where it sometimes attains to 150 feet high. 
The form from the drier Black Hills region has nat- 
urally been found to stand best on the northern prai- 
ries, but this in cultivation is rarely above 50 feet high. 
The glaucous varieties are handsome and distinct. 
P. pungens is found in California, Wyoming, Utah 
and Colorado, but it is only those from seeds gath- 
ered at the most high and difficult Rocky mountain 
elevations that are of any use eastward. Such are 
apt to have a good proportion of so-called blue forms, 
which are often handsome indeed. The Western nur- 
series are famous for them, and their seedlings, which 
are by far the most satisfactory, may now be had 
cheaply and in quantity, so that good masses can be 
planted on large grounds. Where expense is no ob- 
ject the grafted silvery forms may be grouped, and 
some at least will retain their color to a good age. In 
the grime and dust of towns, however, if they live at 
all, they are apt to assume a green hue in a very few 
years. Of select glaucous forms the Engelmanni — 
like Waterer’s argenta, and Roster’s variety — are 
notable. Some others have been so overpropagated 
by the grafting of branchlets that they form leads 
with great difficulty. 
P. Engelmanni* and its glaucous forms embrace an- 
other handsome lot of spruces which grow in immense 
forests. They occur mostly in the mountains, and 
Aave a wide range from about 55 degrees N. in British 
Columbia, south along the Cascades, east to the Rock- 
ies, and south again to elevations of 8,000 or 9,000 
feet in Arizona and New Mexico; elevations, bye the 
bye, where recent travellers in those regions say a suf- 
ficiency of rain can alone exist to sustain conifers — for 
the drops become I'apour lower down, and evaporate 
completely 2,000 feet above the desert basins ! Such 
holes are no places for Coniferales — unless, maybe, 
the Welwitschia. But how civilization should cherish 
the spruce and pine woods of those mountain tops 
and try to extend them, if only for the sake of poor 
wretches who have to put in much of their summer- 
time “lying in irrigation ditches to prevent their dry- 
ing up.” P. Engelmanni grows to 80 or 100 feet high 
A GROUP OP PICEA ALBA AND P. PUNGENS. 
on the central Rockies up to elevations of 10,000 or 
11,000 feet, becoming smaller towards its higher and 
northern limits. 
Besides the species mentioned there are several oth- 
ers hardy over wide areas of the northern and middle 
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