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82 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland
PICEA BREWERIANA, BREWER'S SPRUCE
Picea Breweriana, Watson, Proc. Amer. Acad. xx. 3 78 (1885); Sargent, in Gardeners? Chronicle, xxv.
498, f. 93 (1886), and Silva JV. America, xii. 51, t. 601 (1898); Kent in Veitch's Man.
Conifera, 430 (1900).
A tree, attaining 100-120 feet in height, with a stem 2 to 3 feet in diameter above
its enlarged base. Branches crowded to the ground, with slender, pendulous branchlets,
which are often 7 to 8 feet in length and sparsely covered in their first and second
seasons with greyish pubescence. Pulvini long and slender, directed forwards.
Leaves often nearly an inch long, rounded on both surfaces, the dorsal surface
keeled and bearing 10 to 12 rows of stomata, the ventral surface dark green, shining
with a prominent midrib, apex obtuse or short pointed. The leaves, on account of
the shoots being pendulous, are radially arranged (never pseudo-distichous), their
apices pointing outwards and downwards.
Cones on short stalks (^ inch), oblong-cylindrical, gradually narrowed from the
middle to each end, 2^ to 5 inches long by f to i inch wide ; scales broadly obovate
with entire rounded margins ; bracts minute, concealed, oblong, with denticulate upper
margin. Seed with long wing (three times the length of the seed itself). The
cones are pendent, greenish, or purplish green when fully grown, becoming dull
brown when ripe, and open to let out the seed in autumn, but generally remain on
the branches till the winter of the following year. (A. H.)
This tree has a more limited range than any other spruce, being confined, so
far as we know at present, to a few stations in northern California and south
western Oregon, on the Siskiyou Mountains, where it was discovered at an
elevation of about 7000 feet, in June 1884, by Mr. Thomas Howell, who directed me
to the best place from which the locality can be approached, a settlement called
Waldo, about 40 miles west of Grant's Pass station, on the Southern Pacific Railway.
I went to this station in August 1904 with the intention of visiting
Waldo; but finding that Messrs. Jack and Rehder, of the Arnold Arboretum,
had just returned, and hearing from them that there were no cones on the
trees in that year, I did not feel inclined to spend three days on the trip. I am,
however, much indebted to these able botanists for the following information, and
especially to Mr. Rehder for a beautiful negative of the tree, which is here
reproduced. (Plate 29.)
There seems to be only a small grove of the trees about 20 miles south of
Waldo, over the Californian boundary, which is best reached by following the trail
to Happy Camp, and turning west near the summit of the pass to a place called
Big Meadows, which is four miles from the pass.
There is another place where it grows near Selma, which is more accessible
Picea
than Big Meadows, and other localities are mentioned by Sargent, who says that
Professor Brewer, after whom the tree was named, had previously, in 1863, found
a tree which was probably the same species, on Black Butte to the north of
Strawberry Valley, at the western base of Mount Shasta, where, however, it cannot
now be rediscovered.
Another locality for Brewer's spruce was found in 1898, by Mr. F. Anderson,
on an unnamed but conspicuous peak at the headwaters of Elk Creek, about two or
three miles west of Marble Mountain and eighty miles west of Mount Shasta. The
elevation of the peak is about 8000 feet, and several hundred specimens were found
growing near the summit; the trunks were 16 to 20 inches in diameter at 3 feet from
the ground, and there were plenty of cones on the tops of the trees which were
about 80 feet high. 1
It grows on the Siskiyous in company with Pinus ponderosa, P. Lambertiana,
and P. monticola, but usually gregariously in groves by itself. The soil and
climate are dry, but there seems to be no special reason why this tree has proved
in the eastern States of North America so difficult to cultivate; and as some
of the conifers of the Pacific Coast which will not grow, or are not hardy in
the eastern States, as, for instance, Abies bracteata and Picea sitchensis, thrive
in England, and the trees with which it is associated in America are hardy
and produce good seed here, we need not despair of seeing this beautiful tree
established in the south of England.
The late Mr. R. Douglas, of Waukegan, 111., visited Oregon in 1891 on purpose
to obtain the seeds, and collected a large quantity of cones, from which several
hundred thousand seedlings were grown. But those sown in America perished in
their first and second years from causes which are not known, and attempts to raise
the tree in the Arnold Arboretum have also failed.
Some of the seed, however, was raised by the late Baron von St. Paul Illaire
at Fischbach in Silesia, which were alive in 1895 ; 2 and small plants were reported
in 1903 to be growing in the Royal Pomological Institute at Proskau in Silesia. 3
The late Mr. Johnson, of Astoria, Oregon, transplanted a few small trees to his
nursery, some of which are, I believe, growing near Portland. Brandagee found a
few two-year-old seedlings among the old trees, and half a dozen of them reached
the Arnold Arboretum alive.
One of these was sent from there to Kew in November 1897, and is growing
near the Pagoda, being about 2^ feet in height at the present time (March 1905).
It is the only living specimen known to us in Britain.
The tree is said by Professor Sheldon to grow from 100 to 150 feet high,
but Sargent gives 120 feet as the extreme height, and Messrs. Jack and Rehder did
not see any higher than about 110 feet by about 9 feet in circumference. Douglas
informed Baron von St. Paul that the largest tree measured by him was 121 feet
high, and 2 feet u inches in diameter at 7^ feet from the ground. As the
region in which it grows is so limited, and forest fires are very prevalent and
1 Erythea, vi. 12 (1898), and vii. 176 (1899). 2 Mitt. Dattsch. Dcndr. Ges. 1 895, P- 42-
3 Ibid. 1 903, p. 77.