About Picea obovata Ledeb.
Picea obovata, commonly known as Siberian spruce, is a species of spruce native to Siberia. Its natural range extends 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 that grows 15 to 35 meters tall, with a trunk diameter of up to 1.5 meters. It has a conical crown with drooping branchlets. Its shoots are orange-brown, with pubescence that ranges from variably scattered to dense. The leaves are needle-like, 1 to 2 centimeters long, and rhombic in cross-section; they range in color from shiny green to grayish-green, with inconspicuous stomatal lines. The leaves that subtend a bud are distinctly angled outward at a greater angle than the rest of the tree’s leaves, a trait shared by only two or three other spruce species.
The cones of Picea obovata are cylindric-conic, 5 to 10 centimeters long and 1.5 to 2 centimeters broad. They start out green or purple, and mature to a glossy brown 4 to 6 months after pollination. The cones have stiff, smoothly rounded scales. The specific epithet obovata means "egg-shaped."
Siberian spruce is an important timber tree in Russia. Its wood is used for general construction and paper production, and its leaves are used to make spruce beer. Cone-scales of Siberian spruce are eaten by the caterpillars of the tortrix moth Cydia illutana. Due to their combination of hardness and flexibility, planks made from untreated Siberian spruce are the preferred material for the surfaces of modern world-class velodromes.
