Picea obovata

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Siberian spruce
Picea obovata Urals1.jpg
Young Siberian spruce trees, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Russia)
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Gymnospermae
Division: Pinophyta
Class: Pinopsida
Order: Pinales
Family: Pinaceae
Genus: Picea
Species:
P. obovata
Binomial name
Picea obovata
Synonyms [2]
  • Picea abies subsp. obovata(Ledeb.) Hultén
  • Picea excelsa var. altaicaTepl.
  • Picea obovata var. coeruleaTigerstedt
  • Picea obovata var. argenteaLuchnik
  • Picea obovata var. kryloviiLuchnik
  • Picea obovata var. luciferaLuchnik
  • Picea obovata var. lutescensLuchnik
  • Picea obovata var. pendulaLuchnik
  • Picea obovata var. seminskiensisLuchnik
  • Picea obovata var. tschiketamanicaLuchnik
Picea obovata golubaia.jpg
P. obovata
Comparison of cones

Picea obovata, the Siberian spruce, is a spruce native to Siberia, from the Ural Mountains east to Magadan Oblast, and from the Arctic tree line south to the Altay Mountains in northwestern Mongolia.

It is a medium-sized evergreen tree growing to 15–35 m tall, and with a trunk diameter of up to 1.5 m, and a conical crown with drooping branchlets. The shoots are orange-brown, with variably scattered to dense pubescence. The leaves are needle-like, 1–2 cm long, rhombic in cross-section, shiny green to grayish-green with inconspicuous stomatal lines; the leaves subtending a bud are distinctively angled out at a greater angle than the rest of the leaves (a character shared by only two or three other spruces). The cones are cylindric-conic, 5–10 cm long and 1.5–2 cm broad, green or purple, maturing glossy brown 4–6 months after pollination, and have stiff, smoothly rounded scales. The specific name obovata means "egg-shaped."

It is an important timber tree in Russia, the wood being used for general construction and paper making. The leaves are used to make spruce beer.

Siberian spruce cone-scales are used as food by the caterpillars of the tortrix moth Cydia illutana .

Due to their hardness and flexibility, planks made from untreated siberian spruce are the material of choice for the surfaces of modern world-class velodromes [3] [4] .

Taxonomy and systematics

Siberian spruce and Norway spruce ( Picea abies ) have turned out to be extremely similar genetically and might be considered two closely related subspecies of P. abies. [5]

Siberian spruce hybridises extensively with Norway spruce where the two species (or subspecies) meet in northeastern Europe; trees over a broad area from extreme northeast Norway and Sweden, northern Finland east to the Ural Mountains are classified as the hybrid Picea × fennica (Regel) Komarov (or P. abies subsp. ×fennica, if the two taxa are considered subspecies); they differ from typical P. obovata from east of the Urals in having cones with less smoothly rounded, often triangular-pointed, scales.

References

  1. Farjon, A. (2013). "Picea obovata". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species . 2013: e.T42331A2973177. doi: 10.2305/IUCN.UK.2013-1.RLTS.T42331A2973177.en . Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  2. Christopher J. Earle. "Picea obovata Ledeb. 1833". Gymnosperm Database. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  3. "The Track | Grassroots Trust Velodrome". www.velodrome.nz. Archived from the original on 2025-06-02. Retrieved 2025-06-02.
  4. "At full tilt: how Manchester velodrome got a new track in record time". Building. Archived from the original on 2025-06-02. Retrieved 2025-06-02.
  5. Konstantin V. Krutovskii & Fritz Bergmann (1995). "Introgressive hybridization and phylogenetic relationships between Norway, Picea abies (L.) Karst., and Siberian, P. obovata Ledeb., spruce species studied by isozyme loci". Heredity . 74 (5): 464–480. doi: 10.1038/hdy.1995.67 .