Weeping Spruce

The northwestern corner of California is particularly rich with conifers. The tallest trees on earth grow along the foggy coast. And the mountains inland somehow avoided recent rounds of glaciation, so they are a haven of biodiversity. In fact, Weeping Spruce survives nowhere else.

Weeping Spruce is also called Brewer Spruce, which can be confusing. Its scientific name is Picea Breweriana. Scientific names are suppose to remove the confusion caused by variation in the common name. But this only sort of works, because scientists also disagree all the time.

Scientific naming is apparently an involved topic, but the basics are simple enough. A bunch of species forms a genus. A bunch of genus-es ("genera") form a family. The first part of a scientific name is the genus and the second identifies the species within that genus. So, for example, Weeping Spruce is the species Breweriana within the genus Picea. In fact, the genus Picea consists of all spruces.

Stepping back a bit, remember that a bunch of genera form a family. Conifers of California fall into two families:

• Pinaceae, which have needles. This includes Weeping Spruce as well as pines, firs, larches, hemlocks, and all other spruce.
• Cupressaceae, which have scales. This includes Port Orford Cedar and a few miscellaneous species, but is dominated by cypresses and junipers.

There are also one or two other small families that I'll come to later.

Back to Weeping Spruce. The name "Weeping Spruce" gives away the tree's distinctive feature: each needle-covered branchlet droops straight down from the branch, sometimes extending several feet. Even the cones are long and thin, hanging down from the branch as in all spruces.

Not only does this tree grow naturally only in northwestern California, but also it grows only in remote, upper elevation areas. And, remarkably, there aren't even any close relatives of Weeping Spruce in the region; aside from the obvious weeping aspect, this tree differs radically from all other Californian trees at a chemical level.

This is a sole survivor hiding out in a land of the lost. Visiting this one should be great fun!