Mexican White Pines are better than our own White Pines in our own climate?!

Species name: Pinus ayacahuite

Common name: Mexican white pine, ayacahuite

Location: Western University campus

I have my suspicions about this tree, and it has nothing to do with the identification. There are three Mexican white pines all planted in a pretty clump; they are definitely ornamental trees and were planted after the arboretum was established on campus (so, believe it or not, these trees are younger than I am. Boy do they grow fast! Because...I'm not that old, no matter what my students would lead you to believe). They are most definitely Mexican white pines. What I have my suspicions about is their distribution and abundance. They are native to three very, very small pockets in Mexico along parts of the mountain range that runs straight through the middle of Mexico. These three pockets are now independent populations, and at the time of their assessment under the IUCN (the International Union on the Conservation of Nature) the three populations were non-interbreeding. This in itself isn't necessarily a big deal, but it's the rest of it that matters. Mexico is undergoing, like many countries in Latin America, a huge shift from rural rolling landscapes where you won't see a person for miles into a highly urbanized country with extensive urban sprawl. On top of that, all of these "Eco Resorts" are popping up all over the country. And then there's the drug running (there's no point in denying that it exists!). Oh, and on top of all of that the conversion from traditional vegeculture multi-crop agriculture to a more "North American" (I hate that description for it, since Mexico is part of North America) method of monoculture agriculture. These four things in combination amount to a lot of deforestation; doing this in an area that already contains three highly fragmented populations of a species, populations that exist nowhere else, probably means that the "Least Concern" status that this species has according to the IUCN is now incorrect. I would bet that at least one of those three populations no longer exists, and that the status of the species should, at minimum, be category NT or "Near Threatened", if not VU or "Vulnerable." But, as with all biodiversity research, you first need to find an organization that will fund the research to go out and study these populations (which hasn't been done since 1994!). To say this is a "Mexican problem," or even a "Third World problem," would be completely incorrect. Under the current economic climate in Canada, the only species reassessments done for species at risk are for species that grow in economically significant areas (like the Tar Sands in Alberta), or in areas where urbanization is slated to occur (in the case of Environmental Assessments). I like to think that Canada is a pretty "developed" country...!

Not having the funding to do diversity studies and study species distributions isn't something that can be restricted to a specific geographic region. It's something we, as human beings inhabiting the world, need to think about. Where are our future medicines going to come from? Nearly 95% of medicines around the world are plant-based or plant-derived (or once plant-derived but now synthesized in the lab). Many of our most successful early cancer treatments originate from plants (taxol is the first one that jumps to mind, and you can read all about the plant that taxol comes from HERE). Our most widely prescribed (and most would argue, for good reason, over-prescribed) antibiotic comes from a fungus (penicillin from the Penicillium fungus). And where would we be without wine (grapes and an alcohol-fermenting fungus) or tequilla (agave and an alcohol-fermenting fungus)?! It would be a sad case indeed. Anyway, onto happier things, like talking about Mexican white pines... :)

The Mexican white pine is one of the most widely planted pulp trees, from which we derive paper. Nearly every large paper-producing country in the world (except Canada) plants the Mexican white pine as opposed to any other white pine species. This is because it is highly disease-resistant (especially to white pine blister rust, which is an ever-increasing problem in Canada and the United States, attacking all of our native white pine species), highly cold-tolerant (despite being from tropical Mexico, it can withstand temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius!), and highly drought-tolerant. This makes it ideal for planting in hot, dry countries, hot, wet countries, cold, dry countries, and cold, wet countries. Name a country that doesn't fall into one of those categories! I dare you :) Because of their large cones, and soft, feathery needles they are also a highly prized ornamental species. One great thing about this tree that makes it ideal to plant as an ornamental is that it doesn't actually get to be that large. The tallest Mexican white pine on record lives in Germany and is only 20 meters tall. That's not a very big tree for being the biggest ever recorded!

Sandra's Garden: The saddles are here, but the Dryads are missing

Species name: Polyporus squamosus

Common name: Dryad's saddle

Location: Sandra's garden

I'm a bit late for Fungus Friday and Shroom Saturday, but I'm just in time for Sunday Fungday (I just made that last one up)! So here's a mushroom post since I haven't done one in a while, and it fits right into the blog theme of "Stuff in Sandra's garden".

One thing I love about Sandra's philosophy to gardening is "if it grows or visits and I like it, it stays" and this idea is applied to literally everything in the garden from visiting neighbourhood cats to mushrooms growing on trees or in the soil. There's apparently a yearly bloom of earth stars (you can read about the ones I found in my garden HERE; these are usually fall or late summer fruiting fungi), and this colony of Dryad's saddle has been fruiting on half a dead tree for a while now. And who wouldn't want to keep this beautiful fungus around?! One absolutely fascinating thing to watch when it comes to the Dryad saddle is the release of spores. You have to wait until it's a sunny day with just a light breeze in the late spring or early summer. Park yourself in a chair (or on the ground) with a good view of the underside of this fungus and watch the show. Trillions of spores will be released from the pores on the underside of the fungus into the wind, and you can literally watch them blow away in a swirling cloud of (what looks like) smoke. I've only seen it once, but it was definitely a sight to behold.

The Dryad's saddle is a great example of a fungus that we believe very strongly to be a "native North American mushroom" but in all likelihood isn't. This fungus lives for the majority of its life cycle in dead or dying trees where it causes a disease called "white rot". This happens when the fungus releases enzymes from the fungal threads called hyphae that digest lignin in the wood. This is GREAT if you're into making paper; lignin is the number one cause of paper crumbling and yellowing with time. Normally the paper industry uses chemical bleaches to get rid of the lignin and turn the remaining cellulose (the light and fluffy part of the tree; the lignin is like a glue that holds everything else together and hardens significantly with age) white, but this fungus does it all on its own. Unfortunately for you, this also weakens the tree enough that it will likely collapse under its own weight or get blown over in a wind storm. If you're a crafty person though this could be a great source of inspiration and raw materials; well-rotted white rot trees are PERFECT for making your own paper. Take the squishy, sponge-like white rot and put it in a pot with plenty of water. Put it on the stove and cook, cook, cook. After it's literally mush, pass through a strainer to remove a lot of the water, put it in a food processor or blender, and blend to further break up the fibres. Once blended, pour a bit of your pulp over a screen with a wood frame submerged in some warm water to "block" the paper, pull straight up out of the water to set the pulp, press with a finer mesh screen to extract as much water as you can, then set in an oven on very low heat (as low as it can go; you don't want to be burning your house down!) for a few hours to dry. Once most of the moisture is gone, carefully peel off the screens and hang in the sun to completely dry. Voila! Paper. You can add some pretty things like small leaves or scented plant products to give your paper some extra oomph (lavender and rosemary work really well!), or some dried or fresh flowers (and who doesn't have an over-abundance of pansies at this time of year?). If this sounds easy and idiot-proof, you would be correct. Making your own paper is fun and easy, once you get the hang of it. And there are so many possibilities for thickness, colour, texture, shape, size...you could spend your whole life just making paper every day! The paper-making industry is slowly starting to take note of "natural" ways to make paper; fungi like Dryad's saddle and other white rot fungi are currently being looked at as a natural means of ridding wood pulp of lignin and naturally bleaching the wood fibres before the paper is made. Perhaps one day we'll start seeing paper products advertised as 100% free of chemicals in the paper itself as well as the pulp production process. See?! Fungi are cool! As a side note, the same process outlined above can be used on the mushroom itself; different species of Polyporus have been used for centuries to make a cardboard-like paper.

Back on topic, the Dryad's saddle probably isn't native because of the type of hosts you most likely find this fungus on. Most of the trees it prefers to rot are European trees. If this was a truly parasitic fungus than you would expect to see that kind of relationship; a good example of this is the European Dutch Elm disease that is killing all of the North American elm trees. Since this isn't a parasitic fungus but rather an opportunistic rotter (something has to have already come along and weakened the tree in order for this fungus to colonize the wood; if there are no appropriate trees like that around it will exist solely on dead logs) it would prefer the wood of the trees it "grew up" or evolved with. This leads me to believe this is a European fungus that probably arrived very, very early in human colonization and has been here ever since. The other possibility is that this really is a North American fungus, and what is found in Europe is a completely different species. Both options are pretty common stories in the fungus world once a population-level analysis is done with special genes called microsatellites.

Apparently this mushroom is edible. To me it would be like eating cardboard, but when it's young you can slice off the edges of the fungus and fry them in bacon grease to get fried Dryad's saddle. To me, this is essentially making a mushroom taste like bacon, and who doesn't like bacon? You could make almost anything edible by frying it in bacon grease. Cooking it on its own sounds like you would end up being mighty disappointed with the results. If you have ever cooked up this mushroom and liked the taste and texture, let me know! I'd be interested in hearing about it and whether it was as uneventful as I'm imagining it would be.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there!

Not quite THE papyrus

Species name: Cyperus alternifolius

Common name: Umbrella papyrus, umbrella sedge

Location: UWO Greenhouse

Sedges don't seem to get much respect in the botany community, and I'm guessing one of the reasons is because they're just so gosh darn hard to identify! There are very few species that are immediately recognizable, and since there are 600 species alone in the genus Cyperus (there are about 5,500 species in 109 different genera in total), that's a lot of unknowns! I, for one, steer completely clear of photographing sedges unless I'm happy just calling it a sedge since the task of identifying it seems daunting to me. One of the clear exceptions to this rule of mine (behold: the photos!) isn't just because it's identified in the greenhouse by a little tag. No, I could have identified this one all on my own. This is the umbrella papyrus! It's the single most popular sedge in cultivation as an ornamental plant (yes, even more than the "real" papyrus...more about that later), often planted in North America as a pond plant. It is originally native to Madagascar (not Egypt like you may immediately think based on its common name), one of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of species native to this rather small island. At one point in time, before humans decided that Madagascar was a nice place to live and that crop plants did well there, it was completely covered by rainforest and savannah, and probably housing the most biodiverse population of endemic species on the planet. But, alas, we're good at destroying things. Now the entire island of Madagascar is almost completely deforested, and most species originally from there are threatened, endangered, critically endangered, or extinct according to the IUCN. If you want to see all of the beauty that Madagascar has to offer (at least, botanically speaking), you might want to go visit sooner rather than later. It's on my "bucket list" of places to go!

Many people have heard of papyrus, but a different species (even though this species is often mistakenly labeled as "THE papyrus"). Cyperus papyrus is a very closely related species but easily distinguished by the feathery tuft of leaves at the top of the stalk, unlike the umbrella-like tuft at the top of the stalk of this species. The stems of the true papyrus (and sometimes this species) are soaked in water until easily pliable, then woven together to make a type of mat. This mat is put on a nice warm, flat rock in the sun and then beaten with another smaller rock to beat out the water and squish all of the fibres in the stem together. Once the stems adhere to each other, the sheet of papyrus is peeled off the rock and hung up to dry. The resulting product, papyrus, can then be used like paper or other material for writing out documents or making paintings. This, however, is not paper. Paper is made from a slurry of fibres of any plant origin (you can make hemp and cotton paper, so the fibres don't have to just be from trees), so the traditional method for making papyrus isn't the paper-making process. Confusingly enough, the word "paper" is derived from "papyrus"; they are two completely different things even though the end use might be the same.

As you might be able to tell from the middle photo, the bottom of the stems and the way that Cyperus grows is very similar to a grass. Grasses and sedges are all in the same order of plants but in different families (same with rushes). The way that I was taught by my supervisor to tell them is apart is the rhyme "sedges have edges and rushes are round, grasses are hollow" (OK, so the rhyme breaks down at the end but you get the idea!). When viewed in cross-section, the stems of sedges are triangular.

A papyrus sheet (image from Faridas Passions)

One of the Austrian pines

Species name: Pinus nigra

Common name: Austrian pine, European black pine

Location: Ontario

The Austrian pine is native to Europe, in countries surrounding the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. There are actually two subspecies of the Austrian pine which rarely interbreed (but are still capable of forming hybrids in a very small overlapping zone as well as when they are brought together under artificial conditions like a greenhouse): the western subspecies existing in southern Italy, southern Spain, southern France and North Africa and the eastern subspecies in Austria, central Italy and Turkey. The needles of the two subspecies are quite different and you can easily tell them apart when side-by-side; the needles of the eastern subspecies are much fatter and much more rigid than the western subspecies. They both have different liveable temperature ranges, too, with the eastern subspecies being able to tolerate much colder minimum temperatures (down to -40 degrees Celsius with no adverse effects) compared to the western subspecies (only about -25 degrees Celsius or so). I believe the subspecies on campus would be the eastern subspecies, P. nigra subsp. nigra.

One major attractive feature that probably led to its widespread planting across Europe and North America is that it is a very fast growing tree, relative to other needle-bearing trees. It was originally thought to be an excellent lumber tree, so it was planted in large numbers in North America. Unfortunately, the grain of the wood is very rough and quite variable across the height of the tree, so making long boards suitable for building is not feasible. It was turned to as a major source of pulp and fibres for making paper, as a fuel source, and is still used as a low-grade wood for some construction purposes.

Unfortunately, as with most plant species that have been transported out of their native range, the Austrian pine has a dirty secret. That secret is a fungus. The "red band needle blight disease", caused by the fungus Dothistroma septosporum, is especially toxic to North American Austrian pine trees because of their inability to breed properly here. Austrian pines have a hard time cross-breeding outside of their native ranges, and the seeds that are self-fertilized are much less likely to germinate. This causes something called "inbreeding depression," which can lead to a buildup of genes that make a tree (this happens in animals, too) more susceptible to a pathogen. The North American trees are very susceptible to this pathogen, and it is an almost certainty that every single Austrian pine tree in North America will succumb to this disease. There is no known treatment once a tree is infected other than cutting it down and burning the residues (especially the needles, where the pathogen is housed in the living tree). Planting this tree, even as an ornamental, is strongly discouraged and planting this tree in continuous stands is not only strongly discouraged, but carries quite a hefty fine if you're caught doing it in many states in the United States (but no provinces in Canada yet). You can see that the tree in the top picture is looking very unhealthy; it is likely showing the first signs of infection from the disease.

The birch with non-acuminate leaves

Species name: Betula pendula

Common name: Weeping birch, silver birch

Location: Ontario

The weeping birch, usually having typical birch-shaped leaves ("acuminate" shaped leaves), is a common species in Europe and Asia throughout its native range and is often called the silver birch because of the bright white or silverish bark of the trunk of the tree. This particular tree is a certain type of weeping birch called the "cutleaf weeping birch", named after its very pronounced toothy leaves. There was once the suggestion that they should be different species because they are so morphologically different (the only real thing they have in common is the general shape of the tree; if that was all that was needed to determine species we would only have about 6 species of trees!), but this idea has been abandoned now that we know how genetically similar they are. There isn't enough variation in the barcoding regions of their genomes to allow for a separate species designation.

The first thing that many Canadians think of (if you're born before 1990 and/or was a member of boy scouts or girl scouts) when they hear "silver birch" is the camp song called "Land of the Silver Birch." To this day, I can still remember every single word! Unfortunately, that song has nothing to do with this tree. The song actually refers to the paper birch, the one from which birch bark canoes are made (which you can read all about HERE).

There are very few modern uses of the silver birch, although historical use of this tree was wide reaching. Currently it is used to make the poles for horse jumps since the wood is heavy enough to stay in place, but not too heavy to injure the horse if it hits the jump. They are also commonly used in the making of wooden utensils because of the attractive grain of the wood and the fact that it doesn't give off a flavour in the food like maple or oak wood would. In Europe the silver birch is popular in the pulp and paper industry, but in Canada we use other species primarily for this purpose. Historically, wine was produced from the sap of the tree, and that same sap could be condensed down and used as a type of glue. The bark was also popular for tanning leathers, especially when a light colour was desired (other barks or plant products were used if a dark colour was desired).

Hack-ma-what?

Species name: Larix laricina

Common name: Tamarack, American larch

Location: Ontario

The tamarack, or as I like to call it the "hackmatack" (is that not the coolest name for a plant you've ever heard?!), is native to Canada and is one of the only tree species that is present in every province and territory across the entire country. Tamaracks are so versatile because despite being conifers, they lose their needles during the winter. This decreases what's called "evapotranspiration stress" during the winter (the plant's conflict in the needles between wanting to open stomata, or breathing holes, to let in carbon dioxide and oxygen so it can make sugars and energy and wanting to close stomata to prevent water loss). This might seem like a given: open them during the spring, summer and fall when water is easy to come by via the roots, and keep them closed all winter. Easy peasy! Well, it's often not that simple. In order to maintain needles during the winter, there does have to be some amount of carbon fixation that occurs just to maintain basic metabolic processes. If a tree opts instead to shed needles like a flowering tree would shed its leaves, this problem is eliminated. It also makes for a stunning colour display during the fall months: tamaracks turn a bright yellow.

In the Algonquian language (the Algonquian language has given rise to about 30 different languages and dialects spoken by different groups of Native Americans), the word "tamarack" means "wood used for snowshoes" so I hope you can guess what the major use of tamarack wood is! Snowshoes are now rarely made of wood (there are much more "modern" metal varieties these days; I find them much less attractive than those made out of wood!), so the main use of tamarack trees is in the pulp and paper industry. The wood was also used to make a type of tea that could be consumed to help with aches and pains from arthritis. I doubt the proposed medicinal usage actually works to any degree, or else tamaracks would be staples of the supplement market. I'm guessing it's more the placebo effect than anything else. Tamaracks are also popular in Japan for bonsai.

Can The Cat Come Back?

Species name: Typha angustifolia

Common name: Narrowleaf Cattail

Location: Ontario

There is a bit of debate as to where this species originated, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's a North American species that has been introduced to Europe. It's entirely likely it happened the other way around; the species is so broadly distributed across the Northern Hemisphere that it has become difficult to tell where it "has its roots," so to speak. All cattails are what are called "obligate wetland" species, meaning that they require the wetland environment in order to grow. This doesn't mean they need to have the base of the plants submerged; it just means that they require very loose, very wet soil to grow with poor drainage. They have adapted throughout the millennia to be able to survive having water-logged roots, where most plant species would essentially drown. Even though roots grow underground, they still require oxygen to survive!

Cattails have a long history of use in North America, from food to clothing and baskets. Almost every part of the cattail is edible, with the youngest parts being favoured. Even though the plant doesn't ever grow true wood, it still can get "woody" (like bamboo; that's not real wood, either) and difficult to chew. The underground rhizomes can be eaten like potatoes, and were once thought to be "the next great agricultural crop" when the whole world floods after the ice caps melt. This idea was rather quickly abandoned since, well, they're not all that tasty. But in a pinch they're actually quite nutritious, even more than a potato or sweet potato. If you're ever lost in a wetland and about to die of starvation, go dig up some cattail rhizomes! Just make sure you cook them; they're incredibly unpalatable when raw, and some even report they might be mildly poisonous. Best not to risk it.

I remember when I was a kid we used to go pick the green leaves to make grass skirts out of for "Hawaiian Day" at day camp. I thought we did that only because we don't have palm trees in Canada, but it turns out that they have been used for exactly that purpose for hundreds of years. Granted, they're not called "Hawaiian grass skirts" when you're not in Hawaii (or using grass...). The reeds are also fantastic for making baskets. Weave the green leaves while still fresh, then allow to completely dry. The basket will be lightweight, can get wet without falling apart, and floats. Great for collecting cattail rhizomes! The leaves can also be woven into a flat mat, laid on a flat rock then pounded flat with a smaller rock. Once all of the leaves have been split open and the fibres have all been mashed together, the sheet is let dry. The dried sheet can be written on exactly like paper would have been, but this material is much more durable. It's actually the exact same method that ancient Egyptians used to make papyrus, where we get the English word "paper". I'm not sure whether the method for making paper this way was independently discovered in North America, or whether word had spread from Europe during the early days of exploration.

Due to disappearing wetland habitat around the world, all cattails are at risk for population decline. To compound this fact, there are some "facultative wetland" species (species that don't require wetlands to survive, but can grow perfectly well there) that outcompete cattails for resources and habitat space. Unless we actively start ripping out invasive aquatic plants and conserve wetlands, this species is at a real threat of disappearing.

The Colorado Christmas Tree

Species name: Abies concolor

Common name: white fir, Colorado fir

Location: Ontario

As you can probably imagine from the common name, this tree is native to western North America in alpine regions in and around Colorado. While this tree survives well in eastern North America as an ornamental tree, it doesn't make seeds willingly (while cones can be quite prolific, depending on the environmental conditions). In its native range, it hybridizes readily with the grand fir.

Throughout much of North America, this tree is a very popular ornamental tree due to the coloration of the needles. It's not nearly as big of a contrast from regular green trees as the blue spruce is, but it is still quite the contrast nonetheless. There are huge stands of white fir trees of all roughly the same age, which may look strange to visitors to Canada and the United States. If you drive past the stand often, you'll notice the trees never get very large before the entire stand is cut down. This might make you think they're being used for some sort of commercial or industrial purpose and you'd be correct: Christmas trees! The white fir (sometimes sold as the concolor fir) is the single most popular tree to use as a Christmas tree due to the softness of the needles, the colour of the needles, and the fact that the needles stay firmly attached to the tree even after they start drying out (this cannot be said for all fir trees, and certainly can't be said for spruce trees). It also has a great smell when the tree starts to dry out!

Other than commercial value of the white fir as Christmas trees, it has very few other commercial uses. It is sometimes used as a pulp and paper tree, but only when its growing where it isn't wanted in a stand of other trees; the lumber is very soft and very knotty. The tree also is not self-pruning like many other coniferous trees, and retains its lower branches when mature (even though they have long since lost their needles). This is of great concern for "lumber farms," and National and Provincial Park staff; the bottom branches of the tree act as a sort of fire ladder, spreading forest fires very quickly through stands of trees.

This species of conifer tree is important in forests for reasons other than just fire hazards and as the odd pulp source; they are also the host for fir mistletoe, a parasitic plant that grows off of the carbon sources produced by the host plant. It doesn't produce any of its own food, and doesn't ever produce roots that root the shrub to the ground. Instead it completely relies on the fir tree for shelter, food, protection, and water. The mistletoe likely doesn't ever weaken the tree to the point where it will kill it, but when a tree is weakened for any reason it is more likely to be invaded by insect pests or infectious fungi. Mistletoe can indirectly lead to stand-wide forest death.

The "little sister" pine

Species name: Pinus resinosa

Common name: Red pine, Norway pine

Location: Ontario

Surprisingly enough, the common name of this species is not reflective of its natural heritage. Sure, it's an economically important tree in Norway, but it certainly didn't originate there and more than likely wasn't first discovered there, either. The red pine is native to Canada and the northeastern United States, is the state tree of Minnesota, and is much smaller in almost every respect compared to the eastern white pine.

It is relatively uniform in its morphology, so you'll rarely see "exceptions" to the general shape, size, colour, and rate of maturation of any one member in a population. This would suggest that each member of the population is very genetically similar, and that each copy of each gene has few alleles (and perhaps only one allele expressed in two copies). How does this happen? Well, there's only one way: near extinction. This very concept has happened recently with the cheetah and also the eastern cougar. The populations are so genetically uniform that very strange genetic deformities are starting to appear more and more commonly in the population. In a "pristine" population, one that hadn't gone through a near-extinction event, genetic diseases are rare and you usually need two copies of a gene to express the disease. If you only had one copy, you would appear normal, and no copies you would appear normal and any children you had would also appear normal (since no matter what genes they get from your mate, you will be passing on one of your two normal copies of the gene to your children). Because an individual with one normal copy and one recessive copy appears normal, selection cannot act to "weed" that individual out of the population. If that individual mates with another individual that has one normal copy and one recessive copy of the gene, they have a 1/4 chance of having a child with the disease. The same thing happens in plants, but many plants can be what we call tetraploid; this means they have four copies of each gene instead of only two. You can see how this might be of great advantage in the plant kingdom; in order to show the effects of a recessive gene, you would need to have four copies of the gene instead of just two, which would occur much less commonly.

The presence of a large number of red pine trees in an area is usually indicative of a widespread natural disaster of some kind, usually a forest fire. Because they are incredibly intolerant of shade, they are often the first trees to colonize an area after fire. Contrary to popular belief, this isn't because the seeds require intense heat to open (which is the case in some other coniferous species). When you intensely burn an area it rapidly decomposes the dense organic layer on top of the soil which allows for easier seed penetration, it burns off insects that might eat the seeds or young saplings, it removes the competitive ability of understory trees and shrubs by killing all (or some) of them, and thins out the branches of the trees that make up the canopy. Fires provide optimal growth conditions for the red pine and other primary colonizing species that are shade intolerant.

The uses of the red pine include lumber, pulp and paper, and for landscaping purposes.

Spindly Black Spruce

Species name: Picea mariana (formerly Picea nigra)

Common name: Black spruce

Location: Nova Scotia

I took this photo in Kejimkujik National Park on the bog boardwalk leading out to the beach. It was a pretty typical maritime spring day: cool in the morning, warming up quickly and becoming incredibly foggy then the fog burning off by the mid-afternoon. This was one of those rare moments where you could see more than 10 feet in front of your face as a fog cloud was blown out of the way.

Black spruce is a typical plant of the boreal forest in Canada and Alaska. It's a native evergreen tree with a very typical shape: somewhat bushy at the bottom, becoming much narrower and more spindly towards the top. One of the most impressive characteristics of this plant towards the northern part of its range is that its a great indicator of predominant wind direction. Black spruce grows very slowly, and slower still when the wind is pushing against the tips of branches. The "wind side" of the tree has much shorter branches compared to the "sheltered side".

Black spruce is one of the many boreal species that require fire in order for their seeds to germinate in great numbers, and so for that reason this species is especially successful at recolonizing the boreal forest after a fire. Since forest fires are relatively common in this forest zone, stands of boreal forest that are dominated by black spruce are often trees of the same age (as opposed to typical successional forests where there are old and young trees of the same species in the same location). Within the boreal zone, it's an incredibly common tree and is at no risk of becoming a threatened or endangered speices.

Black spruce trees grow slowly and never attain a very large circumference despite the tree's age. For this reason they are not valuable lumber trees in the construction business. They are, however, a major source of pulp for the paper industry in Canada. As cultural importance, the black spruce is the provincial tree of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada.