Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico) 2nd ed.Sargent, Charles Sprague
Science
Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico) 2nd ed.
Sargent, Charles Sprague
Trees -- North America
Often planted in Canada, northern New England, and northern Europe as an
ornamental tree; in southern New England and southward suffering from
heat and dryness.
4. Picea Engelmannii Engelm. White Spruce. Engelmann Spruce.
[Illustration: Fig. 42]
Leaves soft and flexible, with acute callous tips, slender, nearly
straight or slightly incurved on vigorous sterile branches, stouter,
shorter, and more incurved on fertile branches, 1′—1⅛′ long, marked on
each face by 3—5 rows of stomata, covered at first with a glaucous
bloom, soon becoming dark blue-green or pale steel-blue. Flowers: male
dark purple; female bright scarlet, with pointed or rounded and more or
less divided scales, and oblong bracts rounded or acute or acuminate and
denticulate at apex or obovate-oblong and abruptly acuminate. Fruit
oblong-cylindric to ellipsoidal, gradually narrowed to the ends, usually
about 2′ long, sessile or very short-stalked, produced in great numbers
on the upper branches, horizontal and ultimately pendulous, light green
somewhat tinged with scarlet when fully grown, becoming light
chestnut-brown and lustrous, with thin flexible slightly concave scales,
generally erose-dentate or rarely almost entire on the margins, usually
broadest at the middle, wedge-shaped below, and gradually contracted
above into a truncate or acute apex, or occasionally obovate and rounded
above; mostly deciduous in the autumn or early in their first winter
soon after the escape of the seeds; seeds obtuse at the base, nearly
black, about ⅛′ long and much shorter than their broad very oblique
wings.
A tree, with disagreeable smelling foliage sometimes 120° high, with a
trunk 3° in diameter, spreading branches produced in regular whorls and
forming a narrow compact pyramidal head, gracefully hanging short
lateral branches, and comparatively slender branchlets pubescent for
three or four years, light or dark orange-brown or gray tinged with
brown during their first winter, their bark beginning to separate into
small flaky scales in their fourth or fifth year; at its highest
altitudes low and stunted with elongated branches pressed close to the
ground. Winter-buds conic or slightly obtuse, with pale chestnut-brown
scales scarious and often free and slightly reflexed on the margins.
Bark ¼′—½′ thick, light cinnamon-red, and broken into large thin loose
scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, close-grained, pale yellow tinged
with red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood; largely
manufactured into lumber used in the construction of buildings; also
employed for fuel and charcoal. The bark is sometimes employed in
tanning leather.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account