Norway Spruce

Here's one of a group of Norway Spruce growing on a hill overlooking the lake.


From Wikipedia:

Norway Spruce (Picea abies) is a species of spruce native to Europe. It is a large evergreen coniferous tree growing to 35-55 m tall and with a trunk diameter of up to 1-1.5 m. The shoots are orange-brown and glabrous (hairless). The leaves are needle-like, 12-24 mm long, quadrangular in cross-section (not flattened), and dark green on all four sides with inconspicuous stomatal lines. The cones are 9-17 cm long (the longest of any spruce), and have bluntly to sharply triangular-pointed scale tips. They are green or reddish, maturing brown 5–7 months after pollination. The seeds are black, 4-5 mm long, with a pale brown 15 mm wing.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

The Norway Spruce grows throughout Europe from Norway in the northwest and Poland eastward, and also in the mountains of central Europe, southwest to the western end of the Alps, and southeast in the Carpathians and Balkans to the extreme north of Greece. The northern limit is in the arctic, just north of 70°N in Norway. Its eastern limit in Russia is hard to define, due to extensive hybridisation and intergradation with the Siberian Spruce (Picea obovata, syn. P. abies subsp. obovata), but is usually given as the Ural Mountains. However, trees showing some Siberian Spruce characters extend as far west as much of northern Finland, with a few records in northeast Norway. The hybrid is known as Picea x fennica (or P. × subsp. fennica, if the two taxa are considered subspecies), and can be distinguished by a tendency towards having hairy shoots and cones with smoothly rounded scales.^[1][2][3]

From Botanical Abstracts, Volume 4:

377. Holmsen, Gunnar. Licit om grangransen i Famundstrakten. [Norway spruce in Famund, Norway.] Tidsskr. Skogbruk 27: 39-48. Mar.-Apr., 1919.—It has been a generally accepted theory that Norway spruce reached Norway from Russia by way of Finland and Sweden, that sufficient time has not yet elapsed for it to cover every nook and corner of the country as shown by the present distribution. The author has endeavored to throw light on this question by a microscopic study of pollen in old swamp deposits. Pollen grains of spruce have thus been readily identified when present. Though there remain many unsolved problems, this study indicates strongly that spruce is no younger on the peninsula than the other forest trees. It appears that the immigration of spruce took place toward the end of the sub- boreal or in the early sub-atlantic era and that spruce appeared earlier in the northern and eastern part of Sweden than elsewhere.—/. A. Larsen.


While I waited for sundown shots, this wonderful little car slipped into the water.


I want one...


Livingston , Burton Edward. Botanical Abstracts, Volume 4. Baltimore, 1920. 56. Web. Google Book Search. 14 Aug 2009.

"Norway Spruce." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 7 Jun 2009, 19:27 UTC. 7 Jun 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norway_Spruce&oldid=295028344>.