Picea morrisonicola Hayata

A slender lofty tree, sometimes quite 150 ft high, but usually under 100 ft, with a trunk girthing from 10 to 20 ft, bark grey, coming away in round thin scales. Young shoots glabrous, pale brown. Leaves very slender, 1⁄4 to 2⁄3 in. long, quadrangular but flattish. Cones cylindrical or ovoid-cylindrical, 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 in. long, 1 to 11⁄2 in. wide, tapering at top and bottom; cone-scales roundish obovate with slightly uneven margins.

Native of Formosa; discovered on Mt Morrison in 1900; introduced to cultivation in 1918 by Wilson, who found that it constituted pure forests in precipitous country up to 9,000 to 10,000 ft. The leaves are dark green and the aspect of the tree ‘decidedly sombre’. Hayata considers it to be related to P. glehnii, but that species is easily distinguished by its downy shoots. It seems to resemble P. wilsonii in its pale, slender, glabrous twigs, and more especially in the very slender leaves. It is growing in the Bedgebury Pinetum, but is not particularly happy there, probably requiring, like most Formosan trees and shrubs, a somewhat warmer climate.

A tree at Borde Hill, Sussex, 31⁄2 ft high in 1932, measures 50 × 21⁄2 ft (1968), and there are two of about the same height and girth at Wakehurst Place in the same county. The present tree at Bedgebury, planted 1937, is 36 × 2 ft (1970).

From the Supplement (Vol. V)

specimens: Wakehurst Place, Sussex, 46 × 21⁄2 ft (1970); Borde Hill, Sussex, this tree is dead; National Pinetum, Bedgebury, Kent, pl. 1937, 52 × 23⁄4 ft (1982); Stanage Park, Powys, 56 × 31⁄4 ft (1978); Headfort, Co. Meath, Eire, 52 × 33⁄4 ft (1980); Birr Castle, Co. Offaly, Eire, pl. 1928, 59 × 31⁄4 ft and 42 × 33⁄4 ft (1985).