#picea

[wild-e-eep]

Spruce root plate.

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Sunday 26 January 2025

A slowing growing conifer Picea breweriana (Brewer's weeping spruce, Brewer's spruce) thrives in a moist but well-drained acidic soil and with shelter from cold drying winds. The major feature of this tree are the drooping curtains of dark green foliage.

Jill Raggett

[flarefighters-fr]

Drew Picea while my nephew was here.

My Ko-Fi ☕

[foliorumviridis]

[thiswillnotdo]

2025_06_15

[jevaratojevanulpi-rat]

Mousing or dive for joy ⁀➴

[dailybotany]

Baby spruce cones! (Picea rubens)

[floralfumofridays]

Floral Fumo Friday of the Week: Norway Spruce (Picea abies)

Yuuka continued her travels to solve the incident. At the end of the penultimate season, there was an intense feeling of unique fear and uncertainty within Gensokyo that was felt by all youkai, including Yuuka. She noticed a few drunken youkai laying around the foot of the Mountain. She thought that maybe she could scare the drunkards when they least expected it. Yuuka approached one of the drunkards, as she gently smiled and politely greeted them. Her smile terrified the youkai, who then screamed, "Vampire!" Yuuka looked feintly confused, "Hm? I am nothing like those little birds...." her smile "I'm just here for some stress relief is all. Things feel quite bleak in this world right now, don't you think?"

The area was now clear of other youkai. Yuuka could see many cones scattered across the empty ground and collected them. She eventually felt exhausted from trying to solve the incident and decided to take a quick nap beside a giant spruce tree. When she slowly closed her eyes, she had thought about something that confused her: Why were youkai afraid of vampires? Vampires are usually a rarity in Gensokyo, and Yuuka found the ones that resided in her old mansion to be rather weak like a frail bird. However, she thinks that a vampire could be the first of many clues to this incident.

Today is Friday, but most importantly it is Friday the 13th in December, on a month that takes place at the end of the year, where many are celebrating the holidays and what presents to give to each other, and where many students are taking exams. The feeling of uncertainty over grades, presents and what lies ahead of the new year sends a frightening and chilling fear into many people. Very scary! 🥶

So this one is most definitely not an aster. 😅The branches and pinecones in the photos are from the Norway Spruce(Abies picea), which is part of the Pine family (Pinaceae). It is native to Europe, but has its fame and cultivation for being the typical Christmas Tree, although it isn't ideal to use for that purpose as it can dry out very quickly. This tree can be very giant, growing up to 40-50 meters tall, but there are cultivars of this tree that are grown smaller and fir-looking. These giant trees can live very long lives, too.

These structures that are broken off of the Norway spruce are called cones, noted for their wooded and scale-like structure. Cones are found in all pine family trees. They are often a fan favorite and collected by small critters like squirrels, who break off the wooden scales to consume the seeds or nuts within the cone.

The name Picea for spruces is latin for "pitch-black" and it might refer to the darker colors of the bark of spruces. The name abies in its species name means "fir" and is the literal name of the fir genus, because spruces and firs were usually placed under the same category of "spruce firs" long ago. Nowadays, we know some differences between them so spruces are placed in Picea while firs are placed in Abies. Norway spruces in particular were called almost always called Picea, but like the white snakeroot of a previous post it has been placed under different genera until it was eventually settled back to Picea with the name Picea abies.

Yosemite Nature Notes 46(2) (1977): Who Ate That Cone? by Beth Huning and Linda Yemoto

Description of the evolution, biology, distribution, ecology, and uses of Picea abies (Norway spruce).