The tree is a shallow rooter, the roots going off horizontally in all directions a little below the surface, and becoming intimately matted with those of neighbouring trees. This surface-rooting often leads to disaster in plantations and forests of Spruce, for it is least able of all the firs to withstand a gale, which will sometimes make a broad avenue through the plantation by toppling the trees one against another.
The wood of the Spruce Fir, though light, is even grained, elastic, and durable, and the straightness of its stem makes it very valuable for all purposes where great length and straightness are required, as for the masts of small vessels, ladders, scaffolding, telegraph-poles; as well as for the varied uses the builder finds for its planks. It supplies resin and pitch, and most of the cheaper periodicals now issued largely owe their existence to the Spruce, for its fibres reduced to pulp are made into the paper upon which they are printed. Although its growth during the first few years is rather slow, progress during the next twenty-five years is tolerably rapid, being at the rate of two or three feet per year, if in a favourable situation, and on moist light soil. When grown in a wood the Spruce loses its lower branches early, but when given sufficient "elbow-room," these remain to a good old age, so that from spire to earth the graceful cone of bright green is continuous.
The name Spruce is from the German _sprossen_ (a sprout), in allusion to the numerous short branchlets that are a characteristic of the tree.
[Illustration: _Pl. 162._ Bole of Douglas Fir.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 163._ Cone of Spruce Fir.]
The Douglas Fir (_Pseudotsuga douglasii_).
Although the name of this tree in English and Latin might reasonably lead one to suppose that David Douglas, the intrepid botanical explorer, was the discoverer of it, that is not really so. It was Archibald Menzies who first made it known to science, by means of herbarium specimens collected in 1792, when, as the companion of Vancouver, he visited the western coasts of North America. But Douglas, in his capacity of collector to the Royal Horticultural Society, landed at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River in 1825, and not only sent home herbarium specimens, but seeds also, of this and several previously unknown Conifers. It was by means of these seeds that the Douglas Fir was introduced to Britain. It was already known by Lambert's name of _Abies taxifolia_, but Dr. Lindley, a short time previous to Douglas' untimely death, selected the tree as a suitable and enduring memorial of the enormous services Douglas had rendered, and named it _Abies douglasii_. Since then Carrière has split up the old genus _Abies_ and placed _douglasii_ in the new genus _Pseudotsuga_.