Picea smithiana Seeds | Morinda Spruce
LATIN NAME: Picea smithiana
COMMON NAME: Morinda Spruce, West Himalayan Spruce
Plant Profile
The habit that identifies the tree from a distance is the hang of its fine branchlets. Secondary shoots droop from the main limbs in long, soft curtains, giving the crown a weeping carriage that no other Himalayan conifer quite matches. The needles are short and stiff, set singly on tiny pegs rather than in bundles, and each is four-angled with white stomatal bands that show as faint stripes under a hand lens. Those pegs separate a spruce from a fir, whose leaf leaves a flat scar.
Cones hang from the upper branches, cylindrical and long, green ripening to brown, with thin flexible scales. Their length separates the tree from most of its neighbours, since a Himalayan spruce cone of this size dwarfs the compact cones of the spruces of Europe and North America. Because the cones dangle rather than stand erect, they also distinguish the spruce from the firs, whose cones sit upright on the branch and disintegrate in place.
Three conifers share the West Himalayan slope, and a few characters separate them quickly. Spruce foliage feels sharp and the needles roll easily between the fingers; fir needles are flatter and softer, with two pale bands beneath. Deodar cedar carries its needles in dense whorled tufts on short spurs and its cones stand upright on the branch like barrels. Read the cones and the leaf scars and identification takes seconds.
Spruce is the genus in which conifer tissue culture was worked out most thoroughly. Embryogenic cell lines can be initiated from immature zygotic embryos, multiplied as suspensor-bearing proembryos and matured into somatic embryos under controlled osmotic conditions, then cryopreserved for years. The technique underpins clonal forestry trials and gives breeders a way to hold a genotype while its progeny are tested in the field.
Science & Biotechnology
Spruce foliage is aromatic, and the oil obtained by steam distillation or hydrodistillation of the needles is a mixture dominated in many Picea species by bornyl acetate, with camphene, alpha-pinene, beta-pinene and limonene in support. The same terpene family turns up in the bark and in the oleoresin, so a distiller can work from thinnings and pruning waste rather than felling timber trees. Researchers use the needle-oil profile as a chemical fingerprint for identification.
Uses & Benefits
The common name of this spruce is a leftover from a synonym. When Link described the tree he placed it in the genus as Picea morinda, and although the accepted binomial is now Picea smithiana, honouring the English botanist James Edward Smith, the older epithet stuck to the timber and to the nursery trade. The tree was first published under the genus Pinus by Nathaniel Wallich, so three names circle the same plant in old literature.
The wood of morinda spruce is light and straight-grained, with a resonant ring, and it has served the hill districts for shingles, packing cases, boxes, furniture framing and light construction. It is not as durable in ground contact as deodar, so it is kept for sheltered work and for boarding. In the garden the tree is grown as a specimen conifer where cool moist air and deep soil can be supplied, and its weeping form makes an effective marker beside water.
Growing from Seed
The species has a long, narrow range. It begins in the dry conifer forests of northeast Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, runs through the inner Himalayan valleys of Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, and continues through Uttarakhand into western and central Nepal. There it mixes with blue pine, deodar cedar, Himalayan fir and oak, generally on moist north-facing slopes, in gullies and beside streams where the soil stays deep and cool.
Sow fresh spruce seed into a mix of two parts sieved loam or leaf mould, one part coarse sand and one part coir, firming it into deep containers or a shaded frame. Barely cover the seed, then keep the medium cool and steadily moist; a cold-moist stratification period in a refrigerator or an unheated frame suits the seed better than a warm windowsill. Damping-off is the chief danger when air circulation is poor.
Prick seedlings out as soon as the first true needles have expanded and the stems have firmed, spacing them about 15 cm apart in a nursery bed with 25 cm between rows. Shade the bench with a lath cover for the first summer and water deeply but less often as the roots descend. Feed lightly with a balanced fertiliser until late summer, then stop so that the shoots harden. Protect the first winter in a frame.
Our Take
Morinda spruce is for the gardener with cool air, deep soil and a long view, because it grows steadily rather than quickly. Use it as the weeping counterpoint to upright conifers. Good companions from the same family are the steel-blue Colorado blue spruce, the Himalayan West Himalayan silver fir, and the hardy deodar cedar.
Related Reading
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