Description
The white spruce is a large coniferous evergreen tree which grows normally to 15 to 30 metres (49 to 98 ft) tall, but can grow up to 40 metres (130 ft) tall with a trunk diameter of up to 1 metre (3.3 ft). The bark is thin and scaly, flaking off in small circular plates 5 to 10 centimetres (2.0 to 3.9 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 millimetres (0.47 to 0.79 in) long, rhombic in cross-section, glaucous blue-green above 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 centimetres (1.2 to 2.8 in) long and 1.5 centimetres (0.59 in) wide when closed, opening to 2.5 centimetres (0.98 in) broad. They have thin, flexible scales 15 millimetres (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 millimetres (0.079 to 0.12 in) long, with a slender, 5 to 8 millimetres (0.20 to 0.31 in) long pale brown wing.
Read more about this topic: Picea Glauca
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“An intentional object is given by a word or a phrase which gives a description under which.”
—Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)