Varieties
On the Continent, according both to Beissner[1] and to the late Prof. Carl Hansen, whose "Pinetum Danicum," published in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society for 1892, is a valuable contribution to our literature, a variety (speciosa) occurs in cultivation, which is light blue in colour and very decorative. It differs from the ordinary form in being slower in growth and in having leaves, which are shorter, stiffer, and more sharply pointed.
Distribution
According to Sargent, this spruce extends farther north-west than any other North American conifer, being found in long. 151° west on the east end of Kadiak island, and all through the coast region of Alaska and British Columbia, west Washington and Oregon, and as far south as Caspar in Mendocino County, California.
In the north it is a small tree, sometimes only a bush, but on the coast of south-east Alaska is the largest and most abundant tree, and grows in company with the western hemlock. Here it attains over 100 feet in height, and ascends the mountains to about 3000 feet.
In the south of British Columbia it is larger in size, but in Vancouver's Island it did not seem common, and was not a conspicuous tree in the south-east parts of the island which I visited.
In Washington it grows to a very large size, and I measured one in swampy ground near a logging camp in the White River valley which was 23 feet in girth at 6 feet from the ground, and appeared to be 3 to 4 feet in diameter at the place where it was broken off at about 120 feet from the ground.
Prof Sheldon, in a pamphlet on The Forest Wealth of Oregon, calls it the largest tree in the state, growing 200 to 300 feet high, and has figured as the frontispiece of this paper what he calls the largest Tideland spruce in the world. This tree grew on the coast in God's Valley, on the North Nehalem River, Clatsop County, Oregon, and measured 30 feet 11½ inches in diameter at 2 feet from the ground, and 20 feet 4½ inches at 6 feet from the ground.
He states that it is distinctly a moisture-loving tree, and in the extensive coast belt forest which it forms is an ideal lumber tree, free from limbs for a great part of its height.
It is not mentioned as growing in the great forest reserve of the Cascade Range, and, according to Sheldon, extends southwards along the coast as far as Curry County. In northern California it grows on rich alluvial plains at the mouths of rivers, or in low valleys facing the ocean, where it is associated with Sequoia sempervirens and Abies grandis, and thus may be said to be almost strictly confined to a region where there is perennial moisture in the air, and an annual rainfall of 50 inches and upwards.
- ↑ Nadelholzkunde, 392 (1901).
