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Tsuga mertensiana
Also called Alpine Hemlock, Black Hemlock, Hemlock Spruce
Mountain hemlock is a large, slender evergreen conifer from the western North American mountains, grown mainly in cool, moist climates. It thrives in cool, humid conditions with good drainage, and is rarely grown outside its native range or in gardens.
Tsuga mertensiana, known as mountain hemlock, is a species of conifer in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is native to the west coast of North America, found between Southcentral Alaska and south-central California.
The distribution of T. mertensiana stretches from Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, to northern Tulare County, California. Its range fairly closely matches that of T. heterophylla (western hemlock), found less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Pacific Ocean, apart from an inland population in the Rocky Mountains in southeast British Columbia, northern Idaho, and western Montana. The inland populations most likely established after deglaciation by remarkable long-distance dispersal of more than 200 km (120 mi) from the coast populations. Their ranges differ in California, where western hemlock is restricted to the Coast Ranges and mountain hemlock is found in the Klamath Mountains and Sierra Nevada. Unlike western hemlock, mountain hemlock mostly grows at high altitudes except in the far north, from sea level to 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in Alaska, 1,600 to 2,300 m (5,200 to 7,500 ft) in the Cascades in Oregon, and 2,500 to 3,050 m (8,200 to 10,010 ft) in the Sierra Nevada.
Native Americans used the species less often than western hemlock, but specifically used mountain hemlock boughs as beds and bathing brushes.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Tsuga mertensiana 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.
