American red spruce
| American red spruce | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
American red spruce ( Picea rubens ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Picea rubens | ||||||||||||
| Coffin. |
The American red spruce ( Picea rubens ) is a species of the genus Spruce ( Picea ) in the pine family (Pinaceae).
description
The American red spruce is an evergreen tree that reaches heights of up to 40 meters and a trunk circumference of up to 100 cm. In the northeast of its range, however, it only reaches a height of about 25 meters and a trunk circumference of 60 cm. The highest known specimen with a height of 46 meters is in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park . The bark of the trunk is deep purple-brown to dark gray. It tears up in fine scales and comes off in older trees in small concave plates. The treetop is narrowly conical and long pointed. The branches are more or less horizontal; the lower branches are curved slightly downwards and rise again towards the tips. The branches are yellow-brown, light orange or red-brown; they are partly densely haired, partly naked with little hair in the furrows. The egg-shaped buds are red-brown and 5 to 8 millimeters in size. The needles are thin, up to 1 mm wide and 0.8 to 2.5 cm long; they end up pointed. In the first year the needles are grass green, later deep green and shiny. The ground needles smell of candle wax or apples.
The male flowers are pendulous and bright red. The female cones are elongated egg-shaped and are often in clusters. They are about 2.3 to 4.5 cm long.
The chromosome number is 2n = 24.
Distribution and location
The American red spruce is native to eastern North America; its distribution area extends essentially from the coastal eastern Canada in a south-westerly direction to the Appalachians . In Canada it occurs in Nova Scotia , New Brunswick , southern Quebec and southeastern Ontario ; it is also widespread on Prince Edward Island and the French-controlled islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon . In the eastern United States , their occurrences extend to the states of Maine , New Hampshire , Vermont , Massachusetts , Connecticut , New York , Pennsylvania , New Jersey , Maryland , Virginia , West Virginia , North Carolina and Tennessee .
This species inhabits altitudes from 0 to 2000 m. It prefers a cool, humid climate.
The American red spruce is rarely planted in Germany.
use
The long roots were previously dug up, peeled off and used for braiding by local Indians. The resin pitch was used to plug holes. In Maine, resin was made into chewing gum from the last half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Settlers used the young green needles for flavoring when brewing beer.
The wood is light and of low density. It is used as lumber , in paper making, and in the manufacture of bowed and plucked instruments.
Systematics
The German botanist Otto von Münchhausen described the American red spruce under the taxon Pinus acutissima in 1770 in his six-volume work Der Hausvater (Volume 5 (1), page 225). The current description of the species as Picea rubens in the genus Picea by the American botanist Charles Sprague Sargent was published in 1898 (Silva 12: 33, t. 597, 1898).
Further synonyms for the species are:
- Picea australis Small 1903
- Picea nigra (Aiton) Link var. Rubra (Du Roi) Engelmann
- Picea rubra (Du Roi) Link 1831 non A.Dietrich 1824.
Others
American red spruce stocks in the Appalachian Mountains, which had already shrunk to a fraction of their original stocks due to forest fires and deforestation, are suffering from acid rain from air pollution.
The oldest known specimen of the American red spruce was about 445 years old.
The American red spruce is the provincial tree of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia .
swell
- Alan Mitchell, translated and edited by Gerd Krüssmann: The forest and park trees of Europe: An identification book for dendrologists and nature lovers . Paul Parey, Hamburg and Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-490-05918-2 .
- Christopher J. Earle: Picea rubens. In: The Gymnosperm Database. January 20, 2011, accessed November 8, 2011 .
- Barton M. Blum: Red Spruce. USDA Forest Service; Northeastern Area State & Private Forestry, accessed November 8, 2011 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b See Barton M. Blum.
- ↑ a b c See entry in The Gymnosperm Database .
- ↑ a b Rafaël Govaerts (Ed.): Picea. In: World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP) - The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . Retrieved April 14, 2019.
Web links
- Picea rubens in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2006. Posted by: Conifer Specialist Group, 1998. Retrieved on 12 May, 2006.