🌲 The Christmas tree nicknamed the cat spruce

Trees often collect more than one name. The U.S. Forest Service’s Silvics of North America, a reference book about North American trees, opens its white spruce chapter like this: “White spruce (Picea glauca), also known as Canadian spruce, skunk spruce, cat spruce, Black Hills spruce, western white spruce, Alberta white spruce, and Porsild spruce.” Two of them — skunk and cat — stand out. The chapter lists the names but does not explain where they came from. North Carolina State University’s Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox describes something that fits: “Its needles have been described as 'skunky' or smell similar to cat urine when crushed.” Neither source says that this smell is where the two nicknames came from, so we cannot say it for certain either — but the smell and the names do match, and the smell comes when the needles are crushed.

Basis: U.S. Forest Service, Silvics of North America, “White Spruce” (Nienstaedt and Zasada), Introduction; North Carolina State University Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox, “Picea laxa (… White Spruce),” Description. Quotations unchanged.

You can tell the white spruce from one well-known fir without smelling anything. Put the toolbox’s white spruce page next to its page for the Fraser fir, a fir that the toolbox says “is commercially farmed in North Carolina as a Christmas tree.” The white spruce has “4-sided pale green to glaucous green needles,” and its seed cones are “pendulous” — they hang down from the branch. The Fraser fir has “Flattened needles” and “Upright purple-brown cones” that stand up on the branch. The fir page adds something odd: “When ripe, the seeds, scales, and bracts fall off together, leaving behind the woody core of the cone.” In other words, a ripe fir cone falls apart.

Basis: North Carolina State University Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox, “Picea laxa (… White Spruce),” Description and Leaves; “Abies fraseri (Fraser Fir, …),” Fruit and Leaves. Quotations unchanged.

The white spruce is a tree of the cold north. The Forest Service chapter says it “has a transcontinental range, from Newfoundland and Labrador west across Canada” — all the way across the continent — and in Alaska, it “reaches the Bering Sea.” The NC State toolbox says it “grows in cool climates, cannot tolerate hot, humid summers,” and explains why growers like it for the holidays: “The short soft needles, pyramidal form, and stiff branches make it an excellent candidate for a Christmas tree.” One more thing about names: the toolbox now files the tree under a newer scientific name, Picea laxa, and lists Picea glauca as a name it was previously known by. The 1990 Forest Service chapter uses Picea glauca. So two good sources can use different scientific names for the same tree.

Basis: U.S. Forest Service, Silvics of North America, “White Spruce,” Distribution; North Carolina State University Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox, “Picea laxa (… White Spruce),” Description and “Previously known as.” Quotations unchanged.