spruce

1. 1. Any of various coniferous evergreen trees of the genus Picea, having needlelike foliage, drooping cones, and soft wood often used for paper pulp.
   2. Any of various similar or related trees.
   3. The wood of any of these trees.
2. A grayish green to dark greenish black.

[Short for obsolete Spruce fir, Prussian fir, from Middle English Spruce, Prussia, alteration of Pruce, from Anglo-Norman Pruz, from Medieval Latin Prussia.]

Neat, trim, and smart in appearance: “a good-looking man; spruce and dapper, and very tidy” (Anthony Trollope).

To make neat and trim: spruced up the chairs with new slipcovers.

To make oneself neat and smart in appearance: He was sprucing for the school dance.

[Perhaps from obsolete spruce leather, Prussian leather, from Middle English Spruce, Prussia. See spruce¹.]

Evergreen tree belonging to the genus Picea of the pine family. The needles are single, usually four-sided, and borne on little peglike projections; the cones are pendulous. Resin ducts in the wood may be seen with a magnifying lens, but they are fewer than in Pinus.

The white spruce (P. glauca), ranging from northern New England to the Lake States and Montana and northward into Alaska, is distinguished by the somewhat bluish cast of its needles, small cylindrical cones, and gray or pale-brown twigs without pubescence (hairs). Red spruce (P. rubens) is a similar tree but with greener foliage; smaller, more oval cones; and more or less pubescent twigs. Occurring naturally with white spruce in the northeastern United States and adjacent Canada, red spruce extends southward along the Appalachians into North Carolina. Black spruce (P. mariana) ranges from northern New England and Newfoundland to Alaska. However, it occurs sparingly in the Appalachians to West Virginia. The cones are smaller than in the white and red species and are egg-shaped or nearly spherical and persistent. The twigs are pubescent.

Blue spruce (P. pungens), also known as Colorado blue spruce, is probably the best known of the western species because of its wide use as an ornamental tree. The twigs are glabrous (without pubescence). Engelmann spruce (P. engelmanni) has needles usually of a deep blue-green color, sometimes much like those of the blue spruce but the young twigs are slightly hairy. The cones, although cylindrical, are smaller than in blue spruce. This species is also a Rocky Mountain tree like the blue spruce, but it is more widely distributed from British Columbia to Arizona and also in the mountains of Oregon and Washington. Sitka spruce (P. sitchensis) is the largest spruce in the Northern Hemisphere. The leaves have a pungent odor, are considerably flattened, and stand out from the twig in all directions. It ranges from Alaska to northern California. The Norway spruce (P. abies), the common spruce of Europe, is much planted in the United States for timber, as well as for ornamental purposes. It can be recognized by the dark-green color of the leaves; glabrous, pendent, short branchlets; and large cones, usually near the top of the tree. See also Pinales.

adjective

In good order or clean condition: neat, orderly, shipshape, snug, spick-and-span, taut, tidy, trig, trim, well-groomed. Chiefly British tight. Idioms: neat as a pin. See clean/dirty, order/disorder.

verb

1. To improve in appearance, especially by refurbishing. fix up, smarten (up). See better/worse.
2. To make or keep (an area) clean and orderly. clean (up), clear (up), neaten (up), police, straighten (up), tidy (up). See order/disorder.
3. To make neat and trim; make presentable. clean (up), freshen (up), groom, neaten (up), slick up, tidy (up), trig (out), trim. See order/disorder.

Definition: stylish, neat
Antonyms: scruffy, unkempt, unstylish, untidy

(click to enlarge)
Black spruce (Picea mariana) (credit: Grant Heilman Photography)

Any of about 40 species of evergreen ornamental and timber trees that make up the genus Picea (pine family), native to temperate and cold regions of the Northern Hemisphere. These pyramid-shaped trees have whorled branches and thin, scaly bark. The needlelike, spirally arranged leaves connect to their stems via a peglike woody base, which remains on the twig when the leaf falls. Tough, finely grained, resonant, and pliable, spruce wood is used for sounding boards in pianos and bodies of violins, as well as in construction, for boats and barrels, and as pulpwood. Common species throughout most of northern North America are black spruce (P. mariana), a source of spruce gum, and white spruce (P. glauca), a source of good timber. Blue, or Colorado spruce (P. pungens) is used as an ornamental because of its bluish leaves and symmetrical growth habit.

For more information on spruce, visit Britannica.com.

Spruce oil has a fresh, woody, earthy, sweet scent, with a hint of fruit. It may be used in the aromatherapy treatment of coughing and depression.

For other uses, see Spruce (disambiguation).

Spruce
Norway Spruce (Picea abies)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Pinophyta Phylum: Coniferophyta Class: Pinopsida Order: Pinales Family: Pinaceae Genus: Picea Link
Species
About 35; see text.

Foliage and cones of White Spruce

Norway Spruce foliage

White Spruce taiga, Denali Highway, Alaska Range, Alaska.

Black Spruce taiga, Copper River, Alaska.

Black Spruce foliage and cones

Sitka Spruce cone

Spruce trees abound in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park in Angel Fire, New Mexico

A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea (pronounced /paɪˈsiː.ə/),^[1] a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the Family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the earth. Spruces are large trees, from 20–60 (–95) m tall when mature, and can be distinguished by their whorled branches and conical form. The needles, or leaves, of spruce trees are attached singly to the branches in a spiral fashion, each needle on a small peg-like structure called a pulvinus. The needles are shed when 4–10 years old, leaving the branches rough with the retained pulvinus (an easy means of distinguishing them from other similar genera, where the branches are fairly smooth).

Spruces are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species; see list of Lepidoptera that feed on spruces. They are also used by the larvae of Gall Adelgids (Adelges species).

The word "spruce" derives from an obsolete term for Prussia in Polish ("z Prus").

Scientists have found a cluster of Norway Spruce in the mountains in western Sweden, nicknamed Old Tjikko, which at an age of 9,550 years are claimed to be the world's oldest known living trees.^[2] However, this is not an age of an individual trunk but of the clone, and Pando, a clone of 47,000 Quaking Aspens, is estimated to be between eighty thousand and one million years old.^[3]

Contents 1 Classification 1.1 Clade I 1.2 Clade III 1.3 Clade IV 1.4 Clade V 2 Uses 3 References 4 External links

Classification

DNA analyses^[4][5] have shown that traditional classifications based on the morphology of needle and cone are artificial. A recent study^[4] found that P. breweriana had a basal position, followed by P. sitchensis, and the other species were further divided into three clades, suggesting that Picea originated in North America:

Clade I

• Picea breweriana Brewer's Spruce. Klamath Mountains, North America; local endemic.

Clade III

• Picea engelmannii Engelmann Spruce. Western North American mountains; important in forestry.
• Picea glauca White Spruce. Northern North America; important in forestry.

Clade IV

• Picea brachytyla Sargent's Spruce. Southwest China.
• Picea chihuahuana Chihuahua Spruce. Northwest Mexico (rare).
• Picea farreri Burmese Spruce. Northeast Burma, southwest China (mountains).
• Picea likiangensis Likiang Spruce. Southwest China.
• Picea martinezii Martinez Spruce. Northeast Mexico (very rare, endangered).
• Picea maximowiczii Maximowicz Spruce. Japan (rare, mountains).
• Picea morrisonicola Yushan Spruce . Taiwan (high mountains).
• Picea neoveitchii Veitch's Spruce. Northwest China (rare, endangered).
• Picea orientalis Caucasian Spruce or Oriental Spruce . Caucasus, northeast Turkey.
• Picea purpurea Purple Spruce. Western China.
• Picea schrenkiana Schrenk's Spruce. Mountains of central Asia.
• Picea smithiana Morinda Spruce. Western Himalaya.
• Picea spinulosa Sikkim Spruce. Eastern Himalaya.
• Picea torano Tiger-tail Spruce. Japan.
• Picea wilsonii Wilson's Spruce . Western China.

Clade V

• Picea abies Norway Spruce. Europe; important in forestry. The original Christmas tree.
• Picea alcoquiana ("P. bicolor") Alcock's Spruce. Central Japan (mountains).
• Picea alpestris Norway Spruce, Alpine Spruce. The Alps in Europe; rare, often treated as a variant of P. abies (and hybridises with it) distinct cones.
• Picea asperata Dragon Spruce. Western China; several varieties.
• Picea crassifolia. China.
• Picea glehnii Glehn's Spruce. Northern Japan, Sakhalin.
• Picea jezoensis Jezo Spruce. Northeast Asia, Kamchatka south to Japan.
• Picea koraiensis Korean Spruce. Korea, northeast China.
• Picea koyamae Koyama's Spruce. Japan (mountains).
• Picea mariana Black Spruce. Northern North America.
• Picea meyeri Meyer's Spruce.
• Picea obovata Siberian Spruce. North Scandinavia, Siberia. Often treated as a variant of P. abies (and hybridises with it) but distinct cones.
• Picea omorika Serbian Spruce. Serbia; local endemic; important in horticulture.
• Picea pungens Blue Spruce or Colorado Spruce. Rocky Mountains, North America; important in horticulture.
• Picea retroflexa. China.
• Picea rubens Red Spruce. Northeastern North America; important in forestry.

Uses

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Spruces is one of the most important woods for paper manufacture, as it has long wood fibres which bind together to make strong paper. Spruces are cultivated over vast areas for this purpose.

Spruces are also popular ornamental trees in horticulture, admired for their evergreen, symmetrical narrow-conic growth habit. For the same reason, some (particularly Picea abies and P. omorika) are also extensively used as Christmas trees.

The Spruce's wood is often called white wood, is used for many purposes, ranging from general construction work and crates to highly specialised uses in wooden aircraft and many musical instruments, including guitars, mandolins, cellos, violins, and the soundboard at the heart of a piano. The Wright Brothers' first aircraft was built of spruce.

Because this species has no insect or decay resistance qualities after logging, it is generally recommended for construction purposes as indoor use only (ex. indoor drywall framing).

This wood left outside can not be expected to last more than 12–18 months depending on the type of climate it is exposed to. It is commonly referred to as several different names which include North American timber, SPF (spruce, pine, fir) and whitewood.

The resin was used in the manufacture of pitch in the past (before the use of petrochemicals); the scientific name Picea is generally thought to be derived from Latin pix, pitch (though other etymologies have been suggested).

The leaves and branches, or the essential oils, can be used to brew spruce beer^{[clarification needed]}. The tips from the needles can be used to make spruce tip syrup^{[clarification needed]}. Native Americans in eastern North America once used the thin, pliable roots of some species for weaving baskets and for sewing together pieces of birch bark for canoes. See also Kiidk'yaas for an unusual golden Sitka Spruce sacred to the Haida people. Native Americans in New England also used the sap to make a gum which was used for various reasons, and which was the basis of the first commercial production of chewing gum^{[clarification needed]}.

In survival situations spruce needles can be directly ingested or boiled into a tea^{[clarification needed]}. This replaces large amounts of vitamin C. Also, water is stored in a spruce's needles, providing an alternative means of hydration^{[clarification needed]}. Spruce can be used as a preventative measure for scurvy in an environment where meat is the only prominent food source^{[clarification needed]}.

Spruce branches are also used at Aintree racecourse, Liverpool, to build several of the fences on the Grand National course.

References

1. ^ Sunset Western Garden Book, 1995:606–607
2. ^ Swedish Spruce Is World's Oldest Tree: Scientific American Podcast
3. ^ Quaking Aspen by the Bryce Canyon National Park Service
4. ^ ^{a b} Ran, J.-H., Wei, X.-X. & Wang, X.-Q. 2006. Molecular phylogeny and biogeography of Picea (Pinaceae): Implications for phylogeographical studies using cytoplasmic haplotypes. Mol Phylogenet Evol. 41(2): 405-19.
5. ^ Sigurgeirsson, A. & Szmidt, A.E. 1993. Phylogenetic and biogeographic implications of chloroplast DNA variation in Picea. Nordic Journal of Botany 13(3): 233-246.

External links

• Arboretum de Villardebelle Picea cone photos Cones of selected species (page 1)
• Arboretum de Villardebelle Picea cone photos Cones of selected species (page 2)
• Gymnosperm Database - Picea

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Picea

v • d • e Genera of the Pinaceae family Pinus · Picea · Cathaya · Larix · Pseudotsuga · Abies · Cedrus · Keteleeria · Pseudolarix · Nothotsuga · Tsuga

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Dansk (Danish)
1.
adj. - pyntelig, net, flot, pyntet
v. tr. - nette sig, pynte
v. intr. - nette sig, pynte sig

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    nette sig, pynte sig

2.
n. - gran, rødgran

3.
v. intr. - foregive, bilde ind
v. intr. - bedrage, narre

Nederlands (Dutch)
spar, netjes

Français (French)
1.
adj. - bien soigné, pimpant, impeccable, coquet, bien tenu
v. tr. - faire beau/belle, astiquer, nettoyer
v. intr. - s'arranger

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    se mettre sur son trente et un, se faire beau/belle
• spruce up    se faire beau/belle, astiquer, nettoyer

2.
n. - épicéa, bois d'épicéa

3.
v. intr. - décevoir, faire semblant
v. tr. - décevoir, tromper

Deutsch (German)
1.
adj. - schmuck
v. - fein machen putzen

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    sich herausputzen
• spruce up    fein machen, putzen

2.
n. - Fichte

3.
v. - täuschen, lügen

Ελληνική (Greek)
adj. - ευπαρουσίαστος, νοικοκυρεμένος, περιποιημένος (κν. σενιαρισμένος, σένιος)
v. - ευπρεπίζω/-ομαι (κν. σενιάρω/-ομαι), λουφάρω, (Βρετ., αργκό) εξαπατώ (κν. ρίχνω)
n. - (φυτολ.) πικέα, ερυθρελάτη

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    ευπρεπίζομαι, σενιάρομαι

Italiano (Italian)
abete

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    farsi bello

Português (Portuguese)
adj. - arrumado
v. - enfeitar-se
n. - abeto (m)

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    arrumar-se

Русский (Russian)
ель, хвойное дерево, древесина хвойных деревьев, щеголеватый, чистенький, приводить в порядок, наводить блеск, наряжать, прихорашиваться

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    принарядиться

Español (Spanish)
1.
adj. - pulcro, galano, pulido, elegante, peripuesto
v. tr. - asear, componer, vestir con elegancia
v. intr. - asearse

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    emperejilarse, acicalarse, emperifollarse
• spruce up    asearse, mejorar la apariencia

2.
n. - abeto, picea

3.
v. intr. - aparentar
v. tr. - engañar, defraudar

Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - prydlig, fin, nätt, sprättig
v. - piffa upp sig, snygga till sig
n. - gran

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
1. 云杉, 花旗松, 云杉木

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    把自己打扮得漂亮整洁

2. 整洁漂亮的, 把...打扮得整洁漂亮, 把自己打扮得整洁漂亮

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
1.
adj. - 整潔漂亮的
v. tr. - 把...打扮得整潔漂亮
v. intr. - 把自己打扮得整潔漂亮

2.
n. - 雲杉, 花旗松, 雲杉木

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    把自己打扮得漂亮整潔

한국어 (Korean)
1.
adj. - 말쑥한, 멋진, 맵시 있는
v. tr. - 말쑥하게 하다, 모양 내다
v. intr. - 몸치장하다, 멋을 부리다

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    옷차림을 단정히 하다

2.
n. - 가문비나무속의 식물, 독일 가문비

3.
v. intr. - 사기나 속임수에 가담하다
v. intr. - 속이다

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - きちんとした, こぎれいな
n. - トウヒ, ドイツトウヒ, トウヒ材
v. - きちんとする

idioms:

• spruce oneself up    おめかしする

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(صفه) أنيق, حسن الهندام (فعل) يتأنق, يرتب (الاسم) نوع شجر‏

עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - ‮נקי, מסודר, מצוחצח, מטופח‬
v. tr. - ‮טיפח את עצמו, סידר הופעתו‬
v. intr. - ‮היה בעל הופעה מסודרת‬
n. - ‮אשוחית (סוג של עץ-מחט)‬
v. intr. - ‮רימה, שיקר, השתמט ממילוי חובה, העמיד פנים‬
v. intr. - ‮רימה‬

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