A tree, usually 20°—30° and occasionally 100° high, with a trunk 6′—12′ and rarely 3° in diameter, and comparatively short branches generally pendulous with upward curves, forming an open irregular crown, light green branchlets coated with pale pubescence, soon beginning to grow darker, and during their first winter light cinnamon-brown and covered with short rusty pubescence, their thin brown bark gradually becoming glabrous and beginning to break into small thin scales during their second year; at the extreme north sometimes cone-bearing when only 2°—3° high. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, light reddish brown, puberulous, about ⅛′ long. Bark ¼′—½′ thick and broken on the surface into thin rather closely appressed gray-brown scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, pale yellow-white, with thin sapwood; probably rarely used outside of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, except in the manufacture of paper pulp. Spruce-gum, the resinous exudations of the Spruce-trees of northeastern America, is gathered in considerable quantities principally in northern New England and Canada, and is used as a masticatory. Spruce-beer is made by boiling the branches of the Black and Red Spruces. Distribution. At the north on well-drained bottom-lands and the slopes of barren stony hills, and southward in sphagnum-covered bogs, swamps, and on their borders, from Labrador to the valley of the Mackenzie River in about latitude 65° north, and, crossing the Rocky Mountains, through the interior of Alaska to the valley of White River; southward through Newfoundland, the maritime provinces, eastern Canada and the northeastern United States to central Pennsylvania, and along the Alleghany Mountains to northern Virginia; and from the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, through northern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba, and south to northeastern and northern Minnesota, and central Wisconsin and Michigan; very abundant at the far north and the largest coniferous tree of Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba, covering here large areas and growing to its largest size; common in Newfoundland and all the provinces of eastern Canada except southern Ontario; in the United States less abundant, of small size, and usually only in cold sphagnum swamps (var. _brevifolia_ Rehd.) Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree, the Black Spruce is short-lived in cultivation and one of the least desirable of all Spruce-trees for the decoration of parks and gardens. 2. Picea rubra Link. Red Spruce. _Picea rubens_ Sarg. [Illustration: Fig. 40]