Blue Spruce
likes moisture and is commonly found at the side of mountain streams and
on moist mountain-sides.
Blue Spruce is
the state tree of Colorado (until 2015 also the state tree of Utah) and is found in magnificent stands in the mountainous parts of Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and New Mexico. The
range of Blue Spruce is more limited than that of Engelmann
Spruce which reaches to the Pacific Coast and into western Canada (see range maps below).
Because of its beautiful
color and lovely symmetry, Colorado Blue Spruce is frequently planted as an
ornamental in many parts of North America. The ornamentals are selected for the blue-green (not really blue) color, often present
only in new leaves in wild specimens.
Blue Spruce and Engelmann Spruce are very similar and are often difficult
to tell apart. See the
top of the page for a
comparison of their characteristics.
George
Engelmann, St. Louis doctor and highly respected botanist, named and
described Picea pungens in 1879. The first
authenticated collection of this tree is that by Charles Parry in 1861 from Clear Creek, Colorado. Parry sent some of these collections to his friend Engelmann. (Click
to see this specimen in the Missouri Botanical Garden herbarium.)
I think the gap of 18 years between the time Parry collected the species and the time Engelmann described it can be accounted for by misidentification.
When Parry collected the specimen
in 1861 he and Engelmann considered it to be an already described species, Abies menziesii. This name had been given by John Lindley in 1835 to the Pacific coast
giant Spruce trees, what we now call Sitka Spruce, Picea
sitchensis. Parry, Engelmann, and others of the time believed
that the Blue Spruce was the same as the Sitka Spruce and they thus
used the name Abies menziesii for Blue Spruce, as the name on the above referenced Missouri Botanical Garden herbarium specimen indicates.
Mistaken nomenclature with regard to Abies menziesii preceded Parry and Engelmann, for when Lindley
honored Archibald Menzies (doctor, botanist, explorer) with the Abies
menziesii name he did not know that the name had already been used by Charles Mirbel in
1825 to name the tree that we now call Pseudotsuga menziesii, the Douglas Fir. Mirbel's use of the Abies menziesii name apparently was not
widely publicized in 1825 and was unknown to almost all botanists until 125 years
later. (The
naming of Douglas Fir is quite a contorted story in itself and is nicely told by James Reveal
on the Lewis and Clark website.)
The
identification
of Blue Spruce as Sitka Spruce persisted into the
1870s. For instance,
Thomas Porter and John Coulter labeled the plant Abies menziesii in their 1874 Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado (the first flora of Colorado). And
Townshend Brandegee, botanist to Ferdinand Hayden on the Hayden Expedition
across southern Colorado, identified the conifers
he found as Abies: he called Engelmann Spruce, Abies Engelmannii;
Sub-alpine Fir, Abies grandis; and Blue Spruce, Abies
Menziesii. (Capitalization and spelling is Brandegee's.)
In September of 1874 Engelmann was in Colorado
and collected specimens of Blue Spruce. Click
to see the Missouri Botanical Garden herbarium specimen of Blue Spruce that Engelmann collected in 1874. Notice the
tag in the lower left corner that indicates in Engelmann's handwriting that
he collected his specimens near Clear Creek, Lindstrom, Colorado (Parry made his collection in 1861 along Clear Creek); that he believed the
tree never grew higher than 8,500 feet; and that he called the tree Abies menziesii.
Perhaps his personal
examination of the trees gave him a better understanding of their
characteristics and he realized they were not the same as Sitka Spruce and
they belonged in the genus Picea not Abies. Perhaps Engelmann was also prompted to
re-examine the Abies menziesii name for the plants he and Parry had collected in Colorado after he read that in 1855 the Sitka Spruce was
renamed Picea sitchensis by Elie Carriere in his book, Traité Général
des Conifères. Engelmann may also have been prompted to rename the Colorado collections because in Carriere's 1867 revision of his book he
proposed new divisions of Conifers including reassigning a number of Abies species to the genus Picea.
For
whatever reason, in 1879 Engelmann did describe and name this tree Picea pungens.**
There
are more convolutions in the naming of two Spruces that Parry collected in
1861: Parry published two names for his Engelmann Spruce: Picea
engelmannii (May 4, 1863) and Abies engelmannii (May 4 and
October 31, 1863). Parry and Engelmann must have published
the Abies name because they believed their May 4, 1863 publication
of the name Picea engelmannii was in error.
Substantiating this supposition is that, as discussed above, Engelmann
named the other of the two tree species that Parry had collected, Abies
menziesii. See the Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, pages 122 (where Parry refers to the species as "Abies Engelmannii") and 212 (where Engelmann refers to the species as "Picea engelmannii").
That
would explain why the botanical literature of the 1870s calls both plants
"Abies". In an email to me about the naming
of these two Spruce species, James Reveal indicated, "The concept of
what constituted a genus among the conifers was in a state of flux in
1863 and would only be resolved with Carriere's publication four years
later. No doubt Engelmann decided that Picea should be included
in Abies. (This was the view of many at the time)."
One
more piece in this puzzle: Blue Spruce and Engelmann Spruce are, as the maps below show,
very common western species. How is it possible that previous western explorers and botanists (Meriwether Lewis, David Douglas, William Gambel, Edwin
James, Augustus Fendler, John Fremont, Ferdinand Hayden) missed these very common
trees? Are there collections and names that have been overlooked?
Part
of the answer to this question came in an email exchange between
James Reveal, Stanley Welsh, and myself. Welsh is an expert on
Fremont's botanical collections (see his book, John Charles Fremont, Botanical
Explorer, available from Amazon) and he indicates that Fremont actually did
collect what came to be known as Picea engelmannii, nearly twenty
years before Parry collected it:
"As to the Picea specimen cited as engelmannii in my write-up of Fremont's collections, you
[James Reveal] have already noted that the Los Gatos [California] information on the
label, is wrong as to the year of collection, and it is also probably
wrong as to location [central California]. [Fremont's] label
information was open to question more likely than not, and he had probably... [collected it] in 1845, but God knows where."
Fremont collected for
John Torrey but the specimen in question apparently never made it to
Torrey, was never described, and thus was never credited to Fremont.
The
naming of plants is often not a simple story.
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
**The genus name, Picea, was first given by Albert
Dietrich, Prussian botanist, teacher, and for the last twenty years of his
life, Curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Prussia. Dietrich
probably named this new genus in his 12 volume, 1833-1844, flora of
Prussia: Flora Regni Borussici. Flora des Königreichs Preussen oder
Abbildungen und Beschreibung der in Preussen wildwachsenden Pflanzen.
Click for more
biographical information about Parry.
Click for more
biographical information about Engelmann. |
Species present in state and native
Species present in state and exotic
Species not present in state
Species present and not rare
Species present and rare
Species extirpated (historic)
Species extinct
Species noxious
Species exotic and present
Eradicated
Questionable presence
