<p>Spruce i would like to add a little more to ur bio.</p>
<p>Spruce Tree
(Picea excelsa) </p>
<p>SOME groups of plants in their geological antiquity, their structural isolation, and the strongly differing types which they include, seem to stand apart, like the shattered monuments of a vanished race. This is pre-eminently true of the Gymnosperms, those flowering plants without true fruits, bearing their seeds exposed, generally on the inner faces of scales forming a cone. They date back at least to Devonian times, and were the most prominent members of the flora of the whole earth for ages before the appearance of the broad-leaved trees and the gaily-flowering herbs of the field. All the existing representatives of the group are trees or shrubs; and though, in the central pith, the annual rings of wood, and the separable bark, their stems resemble those of dicotyledonous trees, in other respects, especially in their floral organs, they approximate rather to the flowerless Cryptogamia. </p>
<p>The Cycads of the southern hemisphere are the lingering remnant of what was once one of the best represented types: the Yew and the Maidenhair Tree are almost the sole representatives of another and very distinct group; whilst the marvelous Welwitschia of Angola is even more isolated in structure and without any known ancestry. Far more than ninety per cent. of existing Gymnosperms belong to the order Araucariacae, in which the stem is much branched, the leaves mostly simple and of relatively small size, with an entire, or unnotched, margin, and the flowers of the two sexes generally on the same tree, the female ones forming the well-known cones of bracts in the axils of which are other seed-bearing scales. This order is divided into four families, the first three of which seem to have culminated in importance during past geological periods. These are the Cupressinae, including the Cypresses, Junipers, and Arbor-vitae; the Taxodieae, including the Sequoia, or Mammoth Tree and Redwood of California, and the Deciduous Cypress of the Mississippi; and the Araucarieae, including the Puzzle-monkey or Chilian Pine, the Norfolk Island and Moreton Bay Pines, and other mainly southern forms. The fourth family, which seems to be more abundantly represented now than at any past period, is the Abietineae, including Pines, Cedars, Larches, Firs, and Spruces. In all these last-mentioned types the leaves and scales of the cones are arranged in a spiral manner; the two sexes occur on the same tree; the bract is only united to the seed-bearing scale by its base, and each of these scales bears two winged seeds; whilst the pollen-grains also have bladder-like expansions to aid in their dispersal.</p>
<p>There has been considerable confusion as to the names, whether classical, popular, or scientific, of these trees. The word “fir,” the torch or fire tree, was originally applied to the Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris), and Picea and Abies were used almost indiscriminately by classical writers for the Norway Spruce or for the Silver Fir of Central Europe, whilst modern botanists have been hardly more decided. In his “Names of Herbes” (1548), William Turner says:</p>
<p>“Picea is called in greeke as Theodore Gaza turneth, pitys, and after Ruellius peuce and it is called in duch rotte Dan, wherfore it maye be called in englishe a red firre tree.”</p>
<p>The Spruces differ from the Pines, Larches, and Cedars in that their leaves are arranged singly in a spiral along elongated shoots, and not tufted or grouped on lateral dwarf shoots. From the former group they are further separated by the absence of any woody thickening at the ends of the scales of their cones; their seeds, too, ripen in a single year. From the Firs proper, of which the Silver Fir (Abies pectinata) is the best known, they differ in their leaves being four-angled and prismatic in section, instead of flattened and two-edged, and in their cones hanging downwards after fertilization, and (after having shed their seeds) dropping off whole, instead of falling to pieces while on the tree.</p>
<p>The Spruce is the loftiest of European trees, reaching a height of 125 to 150 feet, or even, in its native country, as much as 180 feet, with a straight, tapering stem from two to six feet in diameter, and sweeping branches disposed very regularly round it, giving it, with the long straight leading shoot, a very conical outline. Both this shoot and those terminating the main boughs generally give off a whorl of branches above, and some less well-developed branches, not in a whorl, below; but the secondary branches are produced mainly at the sides of the primary ones, so as to form broad horizontally spreading sprays. In young trees the branches are nearly horizontal; but in older ones–though if crowded many of the lower boughs will die and drop off–if free scope is given for growth a very graceful pendant habit is assumed, branches sweeping down to the ground, and even taking root and again taking a vertical direction, so as to form a grove of young trees round the original stem. The root generally spreads a good deal horizontally, which, together with the preference of this species for soft and somewhat moist soil, renders it more liable to be prostrated by wind than the tap-rooted Pine. The bark of the trunk is rather thin, warty, and of a reddish-brown, becoming scaly as the tree gets older.</p>
<p>The leaves are generally less than an inch long, sharp-pointed, slightly curved, very stiff, and of a dark though clear green; and they are so arranged on the shoot, the upper ones directed forwards along the stem and the lower ones sideways, as to give a somewhat flattened appearance to the individual sprays, though not so regular as those of the Yew.</p>
<p>The pollen-bearing catkins are produced near the apex of the lateral shoots, generally several together, on stalks, which elongate considerably. They are of a yellowish color, tipped with red, and cylindrical in form, becoming ultimately curved, and as much as an inch in length; but in their earlier stages have been compared to half-ripe strawberries.</p>
<p>The cones are borne mainly at the ends of the upper branches, and in the flower stage stand erect, and vary in color, according to soil or situation, from green or yellow to pink, dark red, or purple. After fertilization they become pendant and green, taking the form of a pointed cylinder, from five to seven inches long and from an inch and a half to two inches broad. Their scales are thin, with their edges slightly curved inwards and notched at the top. There are from 160 to 180 of them in each cone; and as each bears two seeds at the base of its inner surface, an ordinary cone may yield from 300 to 350 seeds. In autumn the cones ripen to a rich and glossy brown hue; but it is not generally until the drying wind and warm sun of the following spring that they discharge their seeds.</p>
<p>The Spruce grows almost as rapidly from seed as does the Scotch Pine; for, though for three or four years not exceeding six or eight inches per annum, after reaching a height of three feet the plants will grow from two to three feet a year until they are fifty feet high, so that they may be as much as fifteen feet at ten years old, whilst they may attain in fifty years to a height of a hundred feet. In its native country the tree is not thought to live much beyond a hundred or a hundred and fifty years, and the best Spruce timber brought into the market is from seventy to ninety years old.</p>
<p>The species is widely distributed both in latitude and longitude–more so, in fact, than many of its allies, being indigenous alike in the Kurile Islands and Siberia as in Norway, and from the Swiss Alps to beyond the Arctic Circle. Though in its extreme northern area it seldom occurs at an altitude of more than 750 feet above sea-level, in the south of Norway it reaches more than 3,000 feet, at the same time descending the shores of some of the fjords down to the water’s edge. It is, in fact, the prevalent tree of the basin of the Baltic, and Loudon states that the finest Spruce forests which he had seen were between Memel and Konigsberg, growing in peaty soil, resting on sand, and liable to inundation during a great part of every winter. It is, in fact, owing to its requirement, for its successful cultivation as a timber tree, of soil that in England or Scotland can be profitably cultivated for agricultural crops that the Spruce has not been so extensively planted as the Pine and the Larch, which flourish in drier and more barren soils.</p>
<p>The wood of the Spruce is generally white, more elastic, less resinous, and consequently lighter, than that of the Scotch Pine. When grown in the open, where large branches may be broken off, it is apt to be very knotty; but in denser forests, where it is drawn up, it is fine and even in grain.</p>
<p>The resin, though less abundant than that of the Pines, is of considerable value. It oozes as a fine yellow turpentine, known as “Spruce rosin” or “frankincense,” from cracks in the bark or from artificial incisions, for as long as twenty years; but eventually the wood is rendered valueless for timber, and even almost useless for fuel. By melting, boiling with water, and filtration, the medicinal Burgundy pitch is prepared from this resin in the Vosges Mountains, besides small quantities of colophony, lamp-black, and spirits of turpentine.</p>
<p>As a tree, the chief value of the Spruce is as a nurse, its dense foliage and tapering form serving well for the protection of young oaks or elms, whilst the thinnings prove fairly remunerative as hop-poles. Its tendency to preserve its lower boughs renders it a valuable cover for game; and, as it bears the shears well it is used on the Continent for hedges in nursery gardens.</p>
<p>Broken down by loads of snow or boisterous wind, the Spruce, as seen in Alpine landscapes, attracted the pencil of Salvator Rosa; but from the point of view of the picturesque, in a young state and in lowland scenery, it suffers in the estimation of most people by the extremely symmetrical regularity of outline that accompanies its somewhat somber coloration.</p>
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