Picea schrenkiana

Fischer et C.A. Meyer 1842

Common names

Schrenk's spruce, 雪岭杉 xueling yunshan (Wu and Raven 1999).

Taxonomic notes

Two subspecies, the type and tianschanica (Rupr.) Bykov 1950.

Synonyms for the type (Farjon 1998):

• Pinus schrenkiana (Fisch. et C.A. Mey) Antoine 1841;
• Abies schrenkiana (Fisch. et C.A. Mey) Lindl. & Gordon 1850;
• Picea obovata Ledeb. var. schrenkiana (Fisch. & C.A. Mey) Carrière 1867;
• Picea orientalis (L.) Link var. longifolia Ledeb. 1833;
• Picea robertii Vipper 1948;
• Picea prostrata Isakov 1962.

Synonyms for subspecies tianschanica (Farjon 1998):

• Picea tianschanica Rupr. 1869;
• Picea morinda Link subsp. tianschanica (Rupr.) Berezin 1970;
• Picea schrenkiana Fisch. & C.A. Mey var. tianschanica (Rupr.) Cheng & Fu 1978.

Description

Trees to 60 m tall and 200 cm dbh, with a narrowly pyramidal crown cloaked in pendulous foliage. Bark dull brown, thickly flaking. Branchlets pendulous, yellowish gray or yellow turning dark gray. Leaves spreading radially, directed forward, straight or somewhat curved, broadly rhombic in cross section, 20-35 cm×1.5 mm, with 5-8 stomatal lines on the lower and 4-6 on the upper surface, apex acute. Seed cones purple or green maturing purplish brown, cylindric, 6-11×2.5-3.5 cm. Seed scales triangular-obovate, 12-20×(10-)13-18 mm, apex rounded. Seeds 3-4 mm with a 12-13 mm wing. Pollination May-June, seed maturity September-October (Wu and Raven 1999).

Distribution and Ecology

The type subspecies occurs in the Tian Shan, including China: Xinjiang and Kazakhstan. There are also isolated stands in the N. Pamir and S. Xinjiang (Vladimir Dinets e-mail 1998.01.02). The subspecies is found in the mountains around the Naryn River of Kyrgyzstan (Farjon 1998). Hardy to Zone 4 (cold hardiness limit between -34.3°C and -28.9°C) (Bannister and Neuner 2001, subspecies not specified).

Remarkable Specimens

Trees up to 60 m tall occur in the area south of Almaty in Kazakhstan (Vladimir Dinets e-mail 1998.01.02).

The oldest known living specimen, 502 years, was documented in a tree-ring chronology covering the period 1301-2006 (fully crossdated), collected at 2950 m elevation near Engilchek, Kyrgyzstan by O. Solomina (doi.org/10.25921/4vdr-rt82). A number of sites have recorded collections of trees over 400 years old. This site was used in a dendroclimatic temperature reconstruction (PAGES 2k Consortium 2013).

Ethnobotany

There has been some dendrochronological use in climate reconstruction (Jiang et al. 2022).

Observations

Remarks

The epithet remembers German/Russian botanist Alexander Gustav von Schrenk (1816-1876), who collected the type specimen in what is now Kazakhstan.

Citations

Fischer and C.A. Meyer. 1842. Bull. Acad. Imp. Sci. Saint-Pétersbourg 10:253. Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2020.11.28.

Jiang Y., Yuan S., and Jiao L. 2022. Radial growth of Picea schrenkiana influenced by increasing temperature in the Tianshan Mountains. Tree-Ring Research 78(2):90–99.

PAGES 2k Consortium. 2013. Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia. Nature Geoscience 6:339-346. doi: 10.1038/NGEO1797

See also

Elwes and Henry 1906-1913 at the Biodiversity Heritage Library. This series of volumes, privately printed, provides some of the most engaging descriptions of conifers ever published. Although they only treat species cultivated in the U.K. and Ireland, and the taxonomy is a bit dated, still these accounts are thorough, treating such topics as species description, range, varieties, exceptionally old or tall specimens, remarkable trees, and cultivation. Despite being over a century old, they are generally accurate, and are illustrated with some remarkable photographs and lithographs.