20 Seeds Norway Spruce Tree Picea Abies Seeds 


Norway Spruce It is a large evergreen coniferous tree growing to 35–55 m (115-180 ft) tall and with a trunk diameter of up to 1-1.5 m. The shoots are orange-brown and glabrous (hairless). The leaves are needle-like, 12–24 mm long, quadrangular in cross-section (not flattened), and dark green on all four sides with inconspicuous stomatal lines. The cones are 9–17 cm long (the longest of any spruce), and have bluntly to sharply triangular-pointed scale tips. They are green or reddish, maturing brown 5–7 months after pollination. The seeds are black, 4–5 mm long, with a pale brown 15 mm wing. The tallest measured Norway Spruce, 63 m (207 ft) tall, is in Perucica Virgin Forest, Sutjeska National Park , Bosnia-Herzegovina .Populations in southeast Europe tend to have on average longer cones with more pointed scales; these are sometimes distinguished as Picea abies var. acuminata (Beck) Dallim. & A.B.Jacks., but there is extensive overlap in variation with trees from other parts of the range. Some botanists treat Siberian Spruce as a subspecies of Norway Spruce, though in their typical forms, they are very distinct, the Siberian Spruce having cones only 5–10 cm long, with smoothly rounded scales, and pubescent (hairy) shoots. Genetically Norway and Siberian Spruces have turned out to be extremely similar and may be considered as two closely related subspecies of P. abies . Another spruce with smoothly rounded cone scales and hairy shoots occurs rarely in the central Alps in eastern Switzerland .