Picea rubens Sarg.

Picea rubens is distributed in eastern North America, from southeast Ontario to Canada’s Atlantic coast, south through New England and then at altitude in the Appalachian Mountains to northern Kentucky and North Carolina. It is here, in the high-rainfall high-humidity environment of the North Carolina Appalachians, that the species reaches its greatest proportions, to 40–45 m tall (Dirr 2009; Taylor 1993). In northern parts of its range it mingles with P. glauca and P. mariana, and although in their typical forms the three are quite distinct (see P. mariana for details of distinguishing features) hybrids with both are known, but are especially common with P. mariana.

Picea rubens bears enough of a resemblance to the widely planted European P. abies that even in its native range it has never excited the horticultural imagination. Michael Dirr admires it, even calling it ‘a beautiful tree’ (Dirr 2009), but laments that it is not well suited to cultivation. Bean was perhaps less emotional when he stated ‘It has not much to recommend it for gardens beyond its interest’ (Bean 1976) and indeed P. rubens could be a poster child for those who would dismiss all spruces as lookalike and boring. Perhaps this is one of those plants that is best admired in-situ. It is certainly a characteristic species of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and of the Blue Ridge Mountains where it makes an important contribution to the extraordinary scenic value of those high mountain landscapes.

Recent introductions of multiple provenances to UK collections, including the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Bedgebury National Pinetum and Westonbirt National Arboretum, have not produced any trees that would dispell the dull stereotype, despite their general good health and vigour. The reasonably stoic performance of established trees in the increasingly warm and dry microclimates of such UK collections as Bedgebury and Windsor may hint at a greater future landscape role for P. rubens. Having said that the finest extant trees growing in Britain in 2024 are widely distributed, but all in relatively wet and/or cold locations, including examples to 24 m in the two famous ‘forest gardens’ at Brechfa, Carmarthenshire, and Kilmun, Argyll, and to 25 m at Endsleigh, Devon (where there are several good trees over 21 m) and Glen Tanar, Aberdeenshire (Tree Register 2024). The largest on record, since lost, grew on the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive in England’s New Forest (also the site of the largest UK record for P. mariana); in 1992 it was 28.5 m tall × 68 cm dbh (Tree Register 2024). It is grown in a few collections throughout mainland Europe but is nowhere a common or important cultivated tree.