Siberian Spruce

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Siberian Spruce
Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Pinophyta
Class: Pinopsida
Order: Pinales
Family: Pinaceae
Genus: Picea
Species: P. obovata
Binomial name
Picea obovata
Ledeb.

Siberian Spruce (Picea obovata, syn. Picea abies subsp. obovata) is a spruce native to Siberia, from the Ural Mountains east to Magadan Oblast, and from the arctic tree line south to the Altay Mountains in northwestern Mongolia.

It is a medium-sized evergreen tree growing to 15-35 m tall, and with a trunk diameter of up to 1.5 m, and a conical crown with drooping branchlets. The shoots are orange-brown, with variably scattered to dense pubescence. The leaves are needle-like, 1-2 cm long, rhombic in cross-section, shiny green to grayish-green with inconspicuous stomatal lines; the leaves subtending a bud are distinctively angled out at a greater angle than the rest of the leaves (a character shared by only two or three other spruces). The cones are cylindric-conic, 5-10 cm long and 1.5-2 cm broad, green or purple, maturing glossy brown 4-6 months after pollination, and have stiff, smoothly rounded scales.

It hybridises extensively with Norway Spruce (Picea abies) where the two species meet in northeastern Europe; trees over a broad area from extreme northeast Norway and northern Finland east to the Ural Mountains are classified as the hybrid Picea × fennica (Regel) Komarov; they differ from typical P. obovata from east of the Urals in having cones with less smoothly rounded, often triangular-pointed, scales.

[edit] Uses

It is an important timber tree in Russia, the wood being used for general construction and paper making. The leaves are used to make spruce beer.

[edit] References