Picea glauca glauca

Description

The white spruce is a large coniferous evergreen tree which grows normally to 15 to 30 m (50 to 100 ft) tall, but can grow up to 40 m (130 ft) tall with a trunk diameter of up to 1 m (3.3 ft). The bark is thin and scaly, flaking off in small circular plates 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 in) across. The crown is narrow – conic in young trees, becoming cylindric in older trees. The shoots are pale buff-brown, glabrous (hairless) in the east of the range, but often pubescent in the west, and with prominent pulvini. The leaves are needle-like, 12 to 20 mm (1⁄2 to 13⁄16 in) long, rhombic (diamond-shaped) in cross-section, glaucous blue-green above (whence glauca) with several thin lines of stomata, and blue-white below with two broad bands of stomata. The cones are pendulous, slender, cylindrical, 3 to 7 cm (1 1⁄4 to 2 3⁄4 in) long and 1.5 cm (5⁄8 in) wide when closed, opening to 2.5 cm (1 in) broad. They have thin, flexible scales 15 mm (0.59 in) long, with a smoothly rounded margin. They are green or reddish, maturing to pale brown 4 to 8 months after pollination. The seeds are black, 2 to 3 mm (3⁄32 to 1⁄8 in) long, with a slender, 5 to 8 mm (3⁄16 to 5⁄16 in) long pale brown wing.