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Picea abies
Also called White Spruce, Norway Spruce, European Spruce, Common Spruce
Norway spruce is a large, fast-growing evergreen conifer native to northern, central and eastern Europe, widely planted for timber and ornament. It thrives in cool climates with moist, well-drained soil and does poorly on dry or deficient ground.
Picea abies, the Norway spruce, is a species of spruce native to Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. It has branchlets that typically hang downwards, and the longest cones of any spruce, 9–20 cm long. It is usually considered most closely related to the Siberian spruce (Picea obovata), which replaces it east of the Ural Mountains, and with which it hybridises freely, but its phylogeny has been disputed.
The species is one of the most widely planted spruces, both in and outside of its native range, and is one of the most economically important conifers in Europe. Major forestry pests that affect the species include the European spruce bark beetle, the large pine weevil, and the black arches moth. Fungal diseases that can kill the tree include Armillaria root rot and red rot caused by Heterobasidion annosum.
The Norway spruce is one of the most widely planted spruces, both in and outside of its native range, and one of the most economically important coniferous species in Europe. In North America Norway spruce is widely planted, specifically in the Northeastern, Pacific Coast, and Rocky Mountain states, as well as in southeastern Canada. It is naturalised in some parts of North America. Naturalised populations occur from Connecticut to Michigan, and probably elsewhere. Norway spruces prefer cool-summer areas and they will grow up to USDA Growing Zone 7, except along the west coast where summers are cool enough even in parts of USDA Growing Zone 10 (Sunset Climate Zones 14-17).
p-Hydroxybenzoic acid glucoside, picein, piceatannol and its glucoside (astringin), isorhapontin (the isorhapontigenin glucoside), catechin and ferulic acid are phenolic compounds found in mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal roots of Norway spruces. Other compounds found in the species include piceol and astringin. Extracts have shown inhibitory activity on porcine pancreatic lipase in vitro.
The Norway spruce grows throughout Europe from Norway in the northwest and Poland eastward, and also in the mountains of central Europe, southwest to the western end of the Alps, and southeast in the Carpathians and Balkans to the extreme north of Greece. The northern limit is in the arctic, just north of 70° N in Norway. Its eastern limit in Russia is hard to define owing to extensive hybridisation and intergradation with the Siberian spruce but is usually given as the Ural Mountains. However trees showing some Siberian spruce characters extend as far west as much of northern Finland, with a few records in northeast Norway. The hybrid is known as Picea × fennica (or P. abies subsp. fennica, if the two taxa are considered subspecies), and can be distinguished by a tendency to have hairy shoots and cones with smoothly rounded scales.
Brewer's Spruce · White Spruce · Jezo Spruce · Black Spruce · Serbian Spruce · Caucasian Spruce · Blue spruce · Schrenk's Spruce · Spruce
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Picea abies by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
