Silver fir (Picea Pungens) Rocalba 0,5 g

Silver fir (Picea pungens)

Contents of the sachet 0,5 g

Medium evergreen tree: usually 25-30, very rarely 46 m tall, with a trunk diameter of about one and a half metres. It grows a regular, very pointed conical crown with many branches, which becomes more cylindrical as the tree ages. The larger branches are horizontal, on older specimens the ones close to the ground are slightly tapering. The shoot axes are shiny light brown, glabrous.

The bark is thin, brownish red or brownish grey, roughly scaly in 5-10 cm scales. Young branches yellowish brown or almost white, almost hairless. The narrowly ovate buds, about 6 cm long, have many lance-shaped bud scales.

The needle-leaves, which have a rhomboid cross-section, grow in a circular pattern, but are more densely packed on the upper side of the shoots, and in clusters at the tips. They are 1.5-3 cm long, very stiff, prickly, and slightly forward and upward arching. They have several stripes with gas rings, the apex sharply pointed, and range in colour from the rare full green to greyish green to bluish green; in wild populations they are mostly bluish green, rarely quite green, but can vary widely from tree to tree - cultivars are most often bluish or ashy greyish green.

The slightly curved, slender cylindrical fruiting cones hang down from the branches. Brownish-purple when young, greyish-brown when ripe, 6-11 cm long when closed, 2 cm wide when closed, 4 cm wide when open. The loosely arranged, papery, 20-24 mm long cone-shaped scales have a wavy margin, finely toothed at the apex. They mature 5-7 months after pollination. Seeds 3-4 mm long with slender greyish brown stalks 10-13 mm long.

Prickly spruce does not usually hybridise with other spruce species, except very rarely with the rocky-mountain spruce (Picea engelmannii)