Species ID help please

[bonsai_beginner]

So I've recently come across this pine in the yard and tried to thin the foliage and branches out, I also tried to wire a few branches down.

I'd just like some help with the identification of this species.





Thanks
DK


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[Daluke]

Spruce

[Firecat]

picea glauca...Sold as Christmas Star.

[bonsai_beginner]

Thank you


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[Gerard]

I would like some clarification. I would call this a picea or Norway spruce.
I always thought that the word "glauca" referred to the bluish powdery colour. I know they have been marketed as picea glauca but is this correct?

[Grant Bowie]

I would like some clarification. I would call this a picea or Norway spruce.
I always thought that the word "glauca" referred to the bluish powdery colour. I know they have been marketed as picea glauca but is this correct?

Good point re colour as it is not really Blue; just a dull green compared to the Norway Spruce. So may it should be Picea "not quite as green and shiny".

It is Picea glauca Albertiana Conica( or Dwarf Alberta Spruce) or a sport or cultivar thereof.

Grant

[Grant Bowie]

I think it was a sport or seedling variation originally from a blue spruce so maybe the name glauca transferred with it?

Grant

[shibui]

Norway spruce is Picea abies

Picea glauca is White spruce (as well as lots of other common names) - native to North USA and Canada. 'Glauca' is latin for blueish grey but there is often some lattitude in naming and it often depends on the original specimen that was collected and named. In some areas the trees are bluer, other areas have trees with greener foliage. I guess it was probably a bluer one that was first described hence the name.
The bluer varieties have often been selected for garden specimens (who wants an ordinary green tree? - there's thousands of them in the forest) so that's what we see mostly in the nurseries.

This one's correct name should be Picea glauca 'conica' (dwarf alberta spruce). As Grant has pointed out, a selection, possibly a sport of the original species that someone has found growing in the forest or maybe noticed that one seedling in a batch was smaller and different in growth habit so they have propagated it because it is different to the ordinary ones. I guess that it must have come from one of the greener types hence the confusion with the color not matching the name.