Picea glauca Seeds | White Spruce
LATIN NAME: Picea glauca
COMMON NAME: White Spruce
Plant Profile
Known to gardeners as White Spruce, Picea glauca is a tree. Needles carry a faint, pungent scent when crushed, and their waxy, glaucous bloom gives tree its name. Prized for its fine, strong, pale timber and its stately form, it is a treasured tree of forest, windbreak and the garden. These traits together are what have kept the plant in gardens for so long.
Science & Biotechnology
The species features in the wider study of the Picea group, and its traits make it a useful subject for work on germination biology, cultivation and ornamental selection. White spruce has a real and distinguished place in the research. Raising it from seed today is a matter of ordinary good practice rather than specialist skill.
Uses & Benefits
Beyond its ornamental appeal, White Spruce has the practical versatility that makes a plant worth growing from seed year after year. Ecologically, white spruce is a generous tree of the garden. Its fine, pendulous, cylindrical cones feed seed-eating birds, and its fine, dense, bluish-green crown gives a fine cover and a shelter to birds through the year. It establishes readily and then requires nothing out of the ordinary.
Spruces gave the world spruce beer, a vitamin-C antiscorbutic of explorers, and their resinous bud syrups remain a folk favorite for coughs; the timber sings in violins.
Growing from Seed
White Spruce is one of those generous plants that come along well from seed. Sow the seeds evenly over the surface and cover lightly in a loose, well-drained seed compost, keep the sowing evenly moist, and give the pot or tray bright light. Once the seedlings have made true leaves, pot them on individually and plant out when they are sturdy and conditions are right.
Our Take
Its role in herbal practice, noted above, adds depth to an already garden-worthy plant. It is a solid representative of the Picea group, true to type from seed. It tolerates the sort of small mistakes every beginner makes.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow White Spruce often pair it with these related subjects: