Leaves crowded on the upper side of the branches by the twisting of those on the lower side, incurved, acute or acuminate with rigid callous tips, pale blue and hoary when they first appear, becoming dark blue-green or pale blue, marked on each of the 4 sides by 3 or 4 rows of stomata, ⅓′—¾′ long. Flowers: male pale red, soon appearing yellow from the thick covering of pollen; female oblong-cylindric, with round nearly entire pale red or yellow-green scales, broader than long, and nearly orbicular denticulate bracts. Fruit nearly sessile or borne on short thin straight stems, oblong-cylindric, slender, slightly narrowed to the ends, rather obtuse at apex, usually about 2′ long, pale green sometimes tinged with red when fully grown, becoming at maturity pale brown and lustrous, with nearly orbicular scales, rounded, truncate, and slightly emarginate, or rarely narrowed at apex, and very thin, flexible and elastic at maturity, usually deciduous in the autumn or during the following winter; seeds about ⅛′ long, pale brown, with narrow wings gradually widened from the base to above the middle and very oblique at the apex. A tree, with disagreeable smelling foliage, rarely more than 60°—70° tall, with a trunk not more than 2° in diameter, long comparatively thick branches densely clothed with stout rigid laterals sweeping out in graceful upward curves, and forming a broad-based rather open pyramid often obtuse at the apex, stout glabrous branchlets orange-brown during their first autumn and winter, gradually growing darker grayish brown. Winter-buds broadly ovoid, obtuse, covered by light chestnut-brown scales with thin often reflexed ciliate margins. Bark ¼′—½′ thick, separating irregularly into thin plate-like light gray scales more or less tinged with brown. Wood light, soft, not strong, straight-grained light yellow, with hardly distinguishable sapwood; manufactured into lumber in the eastern provinces of Canada and in Alaska, and used in construction, for the interior finish of buildings, and for paper-pulp. Distribution. Banks and borders of streams and lakes, ocean cliffs, and in the north the rocky slopes of low hills, from Labrador along the northern frontier of the forest nearly to the shores of the Arctic Sea, reaching Behring Strait in 66° 44′ north latitude, and southward down the Atlantic coast to southern Maine, northern New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, shores of Saginaw Bay, Michigan, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, and through the interior of Alaska. The variety (var. _albertiana_ Sarg.) of the Gaspé Peninsula and the valleys of the Black Hills of South Dakota and of the Rocky Mountains of northern Wyoming, Montana, Alberta and northward, is a tree with a narrow pyramidal head, sometimes 150° high, with a trunk 3° to 4° in diameter, and shorter and rather broader cones than those of the typical White Spruce of the east, although not shorter or as short as the cones of that tree in the extreme north.