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Picea pungens
Also called Colorado Spruce, Colorado Blue Spruce, Silver Spruce
Blue spruce (Picea pungens) is a conifer tree from the Rocky Mountains, prized for its silvery blue-green needles, and widely grown as an ornamental and Christmas tree. It needs cold winters, moist soil and full sun, and grows large in gardens.
The blue spruce (Picea pungens), also commonly known as Colorado spruce or Colorado blue spruce, is a species of spruce tree native to North America in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. It is noted for its often strongly glaucous blue-green needles, and has therefore been used as an ornamental tree in many places far beyond its native range.
Picea pungens and its many cultivars are often grown as ornamental trees in gardens and parks. It is also grown for the Christmas tree industry. Though the blue spruce prefers moist soils, in particularly wet or rocky soils it will root very shallowly in the soil and will therefore be vulnerable to windthrow, being blown over in high winds, in exposed locations. It grows best in USDA growing zones 2 through 7, although when planted in zone 7 it has a hard time coping with high temperatures during the night.
Common cultivars (those marked agm have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit):
Blue Spruce occurs at high elevations, 1,830 to 2,740 meters (6,000 to 8,990 ft) in the forests of the South Central Rockies and 2,130 to 3,050 meters (6,990 to 10,010 ft) in the Southern Rocky Mountains. It grows in mesic montane conifer forests, often associating with Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine, or white fir. It has a riparian affinity, preferring moist soils such as those along streams or at the edges of wet meadows. The Douglas-fir or ponderosa pine only become associated with streams at lower, warmer elevations. It also may be found alongside the quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) in the high mountain habitats of desert ranges in the Intermountain West. At the lowest elevations of its range it also becomes associated with aspens in the well watered stream bottoms with their deep alluvial soils. Though associated with the Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir, the blue spruce is more tolerant of drought and intense sunlight.
Norway Spruce · Brewer's Spruce · White Spruce · Jezo Spruce · Black Spruce · Serbian Spruce · Caucasian Spruce · Schrenk's Spruce · Spruce
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Blue spruce 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.
