I cannot part from the spruce family without going back to the square-needled group in order to commend the Caucasian spruce (Picea orientalis) as an ornamental tree. The slowness of its growth compared with that of the Sitka, Manchurian, and Norwegian spruces may be thought detrimental to its value to British planters for profit; but the grace of its outline, and the fine, rich green of its shining foliage render it one of the choicest of conifers. In the Caucasus it rises to a height of 180 feet, with a girth of 12 feet; and in the British Isles, whither it was first brought in 1839, there are many specimens between 60 and 80 feet high.
The name "spruce" has an interesting origin, about which some controversy has been waged. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century Spruce occurs in English literature as an alternative form of Pruce—that is, Prussia. The Prussians were then distinguished among the nations as great dandies. The chronicler Hall, in describing the splendid attire of some of Henry VIII.'s courtiers, observes that "they were appareyled after the fashion of Prussia or Spruce." Hence "spruce" came to be a synonym for "smart, finely dressed"; and some etymologists have argued that the spruce fir means the Prussian fir; but this has been shown to be an error. The tree takes its name from the sprouts, called sprossen in German, whence is distilled the essence of spruce, used in brewing sprossen-bier or spruce beer. So the tree came to be termed in German sprossen-fichte, translated into English spruce-fir, though we do not brew spruce beer. Therefore the name does really come to us from Prussia, though not in the manner supposed by the older etymologists.
This digression into etymology brings to mind another word connected with the spruce fir, namely "deal," which owns to one of the most remarkable etymologies in our language. Although it has not been traced to its original root, it exists in all branches of Teutonic speech, always in the sense of a share or division. It also occurs in Gaelic as dal, signifying a portion of land, as Dalnaspidal—the land portion of the hospital; Dalrymple (dal chruim puil, the farm of the crooked pool—on the Doon), and so on. The Anglo-Saxon dæl meant a portion, a share; whence we use the word in phrases such as "a deal of cards," "a great deal,"[18] and have applied it to express the planks into which a tree is "divided," or sawn up. From a Scandinavian source we get another form of the word "dale," meaning a valley, as Tweeddale, Annandale, etc.; for in Norway one dale or valley is "divided" from another by mountains.
The Cedar
| "The cedar stoops not to the base shrub's foot, But low shrubs wither at the cedar's foot." Shakespeare's Lucrece, 664. |
The frequency with which Shakespeare mentions the cedar can only be explained as the action of a far-ranging intellect, beholding things through the eyes of travellers, and weaving hearsay into vivid imagery. He had, indeed, scriptural authority for assigning to the cedar royal pre-eminence among trees.
"Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches.... The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him; the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches, nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in beauty.... So that all the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God envied him." (Ezekiel, xxxi., 3, 8, 9.)