Picea × fennica (Regel) Kom.

Hybrids between the largely European Picea abies and the largely Siberian P. obovata have been known from northwest Russia for some time. They are the result of repeated retreats and advances of both parents in response to ice ages, during which P. obovata has retreated to the Ural Mountains and northern European P. abies survived in isolated refugia. During warmer interglacials, P. obovata has repeatedly recolonised northwestern Russia from the east, mixing with both ‘pure’ P. abies and hybrid populations surviving from previous interglacials in the process, thus with each ‘wave’ of recolonisation the influence of P. obovata increases along an east-west gradient west of the Urals. Recent molecular investigations have revealed that the hybrid zone is centred on the Urals – further east than previously thought – but that the influence of P. obovata can be detected as far west as northern Finland (Tsuda et al. 2016). Whether or not this is treated as a stable (or stabilising) species of hybrid origin (viz. P. fennica) or as a nothospecies (P. × fennica) is a matter of taste. We follow Farjon (2017) and use the latter.

Thus Picea × fennica is the dominant conifer over a vast swathe of northern European Russia, from the Urals west through Komi, Nenets, Arkhangelsk, Karelia and Murmansk and just into northeasternmost Finland near the Kola Peninsula (Farjon 2017). It is the most important timber tree across this vast area, and the forestry industry that has developed around it is the major part of the rural economy here (Farjon 2017). It is remarkable that a tree of such significance in its homeland should barely register in cultivation beyond here; at least in western Europe the climate is probably too soft for it except in a few, very cold localities. Foresters beyond its native range have occasionally flirted with it for the sake of experiment but the interest has almost always proved short-lived; it has never really established itself in horticulture, either, being of no better form or beauty than either of its parents, although in a 1982 survey of spruces growing in the Arnold Arboretum one tree is listed, ‘acquired in 1901 and [now] 20 meters tall, a vigorous and handsome specimen’ (Warren 1982) but at the time of writing there are no living accessions of this taxon recorded from the Arnold (Arnold Arboretum 2024).