Picea obovata
| Siberian spruce | |
|---|---|
| |
| Young Siberian spruce trees, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Russia) | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| 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 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."[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
Siberian spruce cone-scales are used as food by the caterpillars of the tortrix moth Cydia illutana.[citation needed]
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
[edit]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][failed verification]
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.[citation needed]
References
[edit]- ^ 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.
- ^ Christopher J. Earle. "Picea obovata Ledeb. 1833". Gymnosperm Database. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
- ^ "The Track | Grassroots Trust Velodrome". www.velodrome.nz. Archived from the original on 2025-06-02. Retrieved 2025-06-02.
- ^ "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.
- ^ 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.
