🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Norway spruce

Nature · Trees

Norway spruce

Evergreen conifer · to 40 m · reintroduced in the 16th century

Picea abies — Pinaceae

The traditional Christmas tree: a tall, narrow, dark-green spire of a conifer, native to northern and central Europe and grown across Britain in plantations. Its single needles sit on tiny woody pegs, so a stripped twig feels rough, and its long sausage-shaped cones hang downwards. Oslo has given one to Trafalgar Square every year since 1947.

How to know it

Whole tree of Norway spruce
Whole tree Ivar Leidus · CC BY-SA 3.0 ee
Leaf of Norway spruce
Leaf JLPC · CC BY-SA 3.0
Bark of Norway spruce
Bark Gmihail at Serbian Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 rs

How to spot them

  • ▸Short, stiff, four-sided needles set singly on tiny woody pegs (pulvini) that leave the twig rough when they drop
  • ▸Long, slim, pendulous cones, 10–18 cm, hanging down from the upper branches with smooth-edged scales
  • ▸Neat conical outline with regularly whorled branches; bark coppery-brown and scaly
  • ▸Needles fall quickly indoors — the reason for its reputation as the messy Christmas tree

How to know it

Single four-sided needles set on tiny woody pegs, so a stripped twig feels rough as a file

Norway spruce. Firs leave smooth, round scars; this genus leaves pegs.

Long slim cones hanging downwards from the upper branches, 10–18 cm, with smooth-edged scales

Norway spruce. Fir cones stand upright and disintegrate on the tree.

Oslo has given one to Trafalgar Square every December since 1947 in thanks for wartime support

Norway spruce — the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree.

Present in Britain before the last ice age but lost, and brought back by planters in the sixteenth century

Norway spruce.

Old Tjikko in Sweden, a clonal stem dated by its root system to some 9,500 years, is of this species

Norway spruce.

Its resonant, even-grained timber is the traditional soundboard wood of violins and pianos, and it yields spruce beer

Norway spruce. The related whitewood is sold as European whitewood.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Picea abies — abies is the Latin name for the silver fir, which caused centuries of confusion between the two genera
  • •Spruce needles sit on small woody pegs; fir needles leave flat round scars — the key to telling the genera apart
  • •Spruce cones hang downwards and fall whole; fir cones stand upright and break up on the tree
  • •Norway spruce grew in Britain before the last glaciation but did not return naturally; it was reintroduced around the sixteenth century
  • •Oslo has sent a Norway spruce to Trafalgar Square every year since 1947 as thanks for British support in the Second World War
  • •Old Tjikko in Dalarna, Sweden, is a Norway spruce whose root system has been radiocarbon dated to about 9,500 years
  • •Resonant spruce is the standard soundboard timber for violins, guitars and pianos
  • •It is a major European forestry species but is vulnerable to windthrow, drought and the spruce bark beetle Ips typographus

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources