Meyer's Spruce
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| Picea meyeri Rehder & E.H.Wilson |
Meyer's Spruce (Picea meyeri; Chinese: 白杄; pinyin: báiqiān) is a species of spruce native to Nei Mongol in the northeast to Gansu in the southwest and also inhabiting Shanxi, Hebei and Shaanxi.
It is a medium-sized evergreen tree growing to 30 m tall, and with a trunk diameter of up to 0.8 m. The shoots are yellowish-brown, glabrous or with scattered pubescence. The leaves are needle-like, 13-25 mm long, rhombic in cross-section, bluish-green with conspicuous stomatal lines. The cones are cylindric, 7-11 cm long and 3 cm broad, maturing pale brown 5-7 months after pollination, and have stiff, smoothly rounded scales.
It is closely related to Dragon Spruce from western China.
It is occasionally planted as an ornamental tree; its popularity is increasing in the eastern United States, where it is being used to replace Blue Spruce, which is more disease-prone in the humid climate there. The wood is similar to that of other spruces, but the species is too rare to be of economic value.
[edit] References
- Conifer Specialist Group (1998). Picea meyeri. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006.
