Kindly sponsored by
This genus has been sponsored and new text is being prepared.
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Picea abies' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A tree 100 to 120, sometimes 150 ft, high, of tapering, pyramidal form densely clothed with branches and leaves; bark thin and scaling; branchlets pale brown, usually more or less downy, sometimes glabrous. Leaves mostly arranged in two sets in or near the horizontal plane, 1⁄3 to 3⁄4 in. long; very deep glossy green, quadrangular, with a few faintly defined lines of stomata on each face. Cones cylindrical, tapered at the top, usually about 5 in. long and 11⁄2 to 2 in. wide; light shining brown; scales bluntly triangular at the apex, the end jagged as if bitten off.
P. abies has its largest and most continuous area in Scandinavia and N.W. Russia, but also occurs wild in mountainous regions from southern Poland and the Carpathians of Rumania to S.E. France. From the rest of France it is absent, as it is from the Italian and Iberian peninsulas. In Britain it was apparently in cultivation by the 17th century, but the accounts are so confused that its early history remains obscure. In ‘Hunter’s Evelyn’ (1776) it is stated that the spruce is a native of Scotland, an error that no doubt springs from the vague use of the word fir for the Scots pine, the Norway spruce, and the silver fir.
Although handsome as an isolated tree and imposing in its height, it is known rather as a forest tree with us than in the garden. It is by nature a slender tree in this country, rarely over 10 ft in girth, but attaining a height of 130 ft or slightly more. Most of the finest trees are to be found in Scotland. The Norway spruce is still an important forestry tree, both in the Commission forests and on private estates, though it is not suitable for chalky or poor acid soils nor, except in moist soils, for areas where the rainfall is less than 30 in. The total area under Norway spruce in 1965 was 263,000 acres, and the annual planting rate by the Forestry Commission is 3,000 acres.
The Norway spruce has attained a height of around 150 ft at Kincardine Castle, Perths.; Cragside, Northumb.; and Trebartha, Cornwall. A specimen notable for both height and girth is: Lingholm, Cumb., 140 × 151⁄4 ft (1983).
cv. ‘Aurea’. – Some examples measured recently are: Little Hall, Kent, pl. 1908, 70 × 51⁄4 ft (1984); Westonbirt, Glos., 108 × 6 ft (1980); Castlewellan, Co. Down, 90 × 71⁄2 ft (1983).
† cv. ‘Merkii’. – A dwarf shrub of roundish habit with a central leader. It was doubted whether this clone, described in 1884, was still in cultivation until a plant was found in the Dortmund-Brunninghausen Botanic Garden.
† cv. ‘Pyramidata’. – A tree of striking appearance, the main branches ascending at a fairly steep angle, diminishing in length towards the top of the crown. Described in 1853.
f. pendula. – Of the same type as ‘Inversa’, but more ornamental, is ‘Frohburg’, raised by the Haller nurseries in Switzerland and put into commerce in 1965 (Dendroflora, No. 11/12, p. 40 (1975)).
A monstrosity in which all or most of the leaves of some leading shoots are converted into cone-scales. It is of shrubby habit and does not develop a leader.
Young shoots of a clear creamy white, approaching afterwards the normal colour; very striking and ornamental. Raised by Messrs Hesse of Weener, Hanover.
A very striking, tightly fastigiate tree discovered in Fambach, Thuringia, Germany by a Dr Thomas (Auders & Spicer 2012).
A very variable and confused group. Some wild plants dubbed pendula have drooping branches. At the other extreme is ‘Inversa’, with the main and secondary branches quite pendulous and appressed to the trunk.
Synonyms
Pinus viminalis Alstr
Main branches more or less horizontal, secondary branches pendulous, almost devoid of laterals and much elongated. This variant is reported to be fairly frequent in Sweden, and was described by Baron Alströmer, a friend of Linnaeus, in 1777.
Synonyms
Abies excelsa var. virgata Jacques
Picea excelsa var. denudata Carr
An abnormality, found occasionally in the wild and among garden-raised seedlings, in which the main branches bear very few lateral buds, so that the energy of the plant is concentrated in the leading growths and the sparse laterals, which become snakily elongated. The leaves resemble those borne on leading shoots in being long and thick. A clone of this, perhaps the typical one, is fairly common in cultivation, but is no more than a grotesque curiosity, of no beauty. In f. monstrosa (Loud.) Rehd. the reduction of branching is carried to its extreme, the plant consisting of a single stem with a bud at the top, the only foliage being of the kind found on leading shoots. The variety ‘Cranstonii’, raised in Britain in the last century, is intermediate between this and the f. virgata.
See under f. pendula.
A medium-dwarf shrub of pyramidal form, eventually 6 ft high, leaves yellowish green, up to {1/2} in. long, those on the upper side of the shoot forward pointing and slightly appressed.
A pendulous variety which does not develop a leader and is usually grown on the flat or trailing down a bank, and eventually covers a wide area with its trailing branches.
A low bush with short, radially arranged leaves, with the branches prostrate or arching up and then spreading, eventually a foot or so high.