Black Spruce

(Picea mariana)

Color Photographs: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Black Spruce (Picea mariana)

Identifying Characters: The quadrate needles, small cones (0.5 to 1.0 inches), and rigid, brittle cone scales will identify Black Spruce.

Similar Species: Within its range Black Spruce might be mistaken for Red Spruce or White Spruce. The cone scales of White Spruce are flexible at maturity, not brittle, and the cones are much longer (about 2 inches rather than 0.5 to 1 inch). The cone scales of Red Spruce are also brittle as in Black Spruce, but longer (1.25 to 2 inches long) and the apical margin is smoothly rounded, not irregular. Red Spruce tends to occur in drier and better drained types of habitats than Black Spruce.

Measurements: 20 to 40 feet in height, rarely reaching to 100 feet; diameter usually less than 1 foot, but rarely reaching 3 feet for large specimens.

Cones: Cones ovate, 0.5 to 1 inch long; cone scales brittle, elliptical, and rough along the apical margin; cones tend to hang on the tree for several years.

Needles: Needles plump, rigid, and quadrate (four-sided); needles dark green and 0.3 to 0.5 inches long.

Bark: Bark gray-brown to gray black, surface broken into closely packed scales.

Native Range: Black Spruce ranges in a broad band from northern Massachusetts to northern Labrador on the Atlantic coast, west across Canada to the west coast of Alaska. Its southern limits consist of isolated patches in northern New Jersey, western Connecticut, Pennsylvania, southern Michigan, southern Wisconsin, southern Minnesota, and southern Manitoba; west across south-central Saskatchewan, Alberta, and central British Columbia. Its northern limit across Canada and Alaska is about that of the northern tree line, although it alternates with white spruce (Picea glauca), tamarack (Larix laricina), and balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera) as the tree line species at different points. (Silvics of North America. 1990. Agriculture Handbook 654.)

Habitat: Throughout most of its range Black Spruce is most common in wet soils and bogs. In the boreal regions of North America it sometimes forms extensive, nearly pure stands.