Picea sitchensis

Lore & Background

Because it grows rapidly under favorable conditions, large size may not indicate exceptional age. The bark is thin and scaly, flaking off in small, circular plates, and the inner bark is reddish-brown. The leaves are stiff, sharp, needle-like, and dark glaucous blue-green above with blue-white below. The cones are pendulous, slender cylindrical, with thin, flexible scales; the bracts are the longest of any spruce.

Reader's Guide

Sitka spruce is of major importance in forestry for timber and paper production. Outside its native range, it is particularly valued for its fast growth on poor soils and exposed sites where few other trees can prosper; in ideal conditions, young trees may grow 1.5 m per year. It has been introduced to Europe as a lumber tree, first planted there in the 19th century, and plantations have become dominant in Great Britain and Ireland. The resonant wood is used widely in piano, harp, and other musical instruments. The root bark is used in Native Alaskan basket-weaving and for rain hats; the pitch was used for caulking, chewing, and medicinal purposes. The tree provides critical habitat for a large variety of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, and its needles comprise up to 90% of the winter diet of blue grouse in Alaska and British Columbia. Due to its thin bark and shallow root system, it is very susceptible to fire, but recolonizes burned sites via wind-dispersed seed.

Did You Know?

• The Queets Spruce, the largest in the world by trunk volume, adds more than a cubic meter of wood each year.
• Sitka spruce plantations make up 25% of forest cover in Great Britain and 52% in Ireland.