Distribution. Dry mountain ridges and peaks near the timber-line on both slopes of the Siskiyou Mountains on the boundary between California and Oregon, forming small groves at elevations of about 7000° above the sea; on a high peak west of Marble Mountain in Siskiyou County, California; on the coast ranges of southwestern Oregon at elevations of 4000°—5000°.
7. [Picea sitchensis] Carr. Tideland Spruce. Sitka Spruce.
Leaves standing out from all sides of the branches and often nearly at right angles to them, frequently bringing their white upper surface to view by a twist at their base, straight or slightly incurved, acute or acuminate with long callous tips, slightly rounded, green, lustrous, and occasionally marked on the lower surface with 2 or 3 rows of small conspicuous stomata on each side of the prominent midrib, flattened, obscurely ridged and almost covered with broad silvery white bands of numerous rows of stomata on the upper surface, ½′—1⅛′ long and 1/16′—1/12′ wide, mostly persistent 9—11 years. Flowers: male at the ends of the pendant lateral branchlets, dark red; female on rigid terminal shoots of the branches of the upper half of the tree, with nearly orbicular denticulate scales, often slightly truncate above and completely hidden by their elongated acuminate bracts. Fruit oblong-cylindric, short-stalked, yellow-green often tinged with dark red when fully grown, becoming lustrous and pale yellow or reddish brown, 2½′—4′ long, with thin stiff elliptic scales rounded toward the apex, denticulate above the middle, and nearly twice as long as their lanceolate denticulate bracts; deciduous mostly during their first autumn and winter; seeds full and rounded, acute at the base, pale reddish brown, about ⅛′ long, with narrow oblong slightly oblique wings ⅓′—½′ in length.
A tree, usually about 100° high, with a conspicuously tapering trunk often 3°—4° in diameter above its strongly buttressed and much-enlarged base, occasionally 200° tall, with a trunk 15°—16° in diameter, horizontal branches forming an open loose pyramid and on older trees clothed with slender pendant lateral branches frequently 2°—3° long, and stout rigid glabrous branchlets pale green at first, becoming dark or light orange-brown during their first autumn and winter and finally dark gray-brown; at the extreme northwestern limits of its range occasionally reduced to a low shrub. Winter-buds ovoid, acute or conical, ¼′—½′ long, with pale chestnut-brown acute scales, often tipped with short points and more or less reflexed above the middle. Bark ¼′—½′ thick and broken on the surface into large thin loosely attached dark red-brown or on young trees sometimes bright cinnamon-red scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, straight-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sapwood; largely manufactured into lumber used in the interior finish of buildings, for fencing, boat-building, aeroplanes, cooperage, wooden-ware, and packing-cases.
Distribution. Moist sandy, often swampy soil, or less frequently at the far north on wet rocky slopes, from the eastern end of Kadiak Island, southward through the coast region of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon to Mendocino County, California; in Washington, occasionally ranging inland to the upper valley of the Nesqually River.
Often planted in western and central Europe and occasionally in the middle Atlantic states as an ornamental tree.
4. TSUGA Carr. Hemlock.
Tall pyramidal trees, with deeply furrowed astringent bark bright cinnamon-red except on the surface, soft pale wood, nodding leading shoots, slender scattered horizontal often pendulous branches, the secondary branches three or four times irregularly pinnately ramified, with slender round glabrous or pubescent ultimate divisions, the whole forming graceful pendant masses of foliage, and minute winter-buds. Leaves flat or angular, obtuse and often emarginate or acute at apex, spirally disposed, usually appearing almost 2-ranked by the twisting of their petioles, those on the upper side of the branch then much shorter than the others, abruptly narrowed into short petioles jointed on ultimately woody persistent bases, with stomata on the lower surface; on one species not 2-ranked, and of nearly equal length, with stomata on both surfaces. Flowers solitary, the male in the axils of leaves of the previous year, globose, composed of numerous subglobose anthers, with connectives produced into short gland-like tips, the female terminal, erect, with nearly circular scales slightly longer or shorter than their membranaceous bracts. Fruit an ovoid-oblong, oval, or oblong-cylindric obtuse usually pendulous nearly sessile green or rarely purple cone becoming light or dark reddish brown, with concave suborbicular or ovate-oblong scales thin and entire on the margins, much longer than their minute bracts, persistent on the axis of the cone after the escape of the seeds. Seeds furnished with resin-vesicles, ovoid-oblong, compressed, nearly surrounded by their much longer obovate-oblong wings; outer seed-coat crustaceous, light brown, the inner membranaceous, pale chestnut-brown, and lustrous; cotyledons 3—6, much shorter than the inferior radicle.
Tsuga is confined to temperate North America, Japan, central and southwestern China, Formosa, and the Himalayas; nine species have been distinguished.