Picea wilsonii

Mast. (1903)

Common names

Wilson spruce; 青扦 qing qian [Chinese].

Taxonomic notes

Type: China, Hubei, Fangxian, collected in May 1901: E. H. Wilson 1897, holotype BM. See POWO for a full list of synonyms; none are in current use and most have not been used since their publication; they identify minor form variants.

Picea wilsonii sits in Clade III of Lockwood et al. (2013) or Clade VII of Shao et al. (2019), a group mostly comprised of flattened-leaf taxa of east Asia. There is little agreement on relationships between the ca. 16 taxa in this clade, but two recent studies have placed P. wilsonii sister to P. maximowiczii (Japan) and P. morrisonicola (Taiwan) (Sullivan et al. 2017, Shao et al. 2019). A fossil-constrained molecular clock estimate assigns the clade a crown age of about 15 million years, the mid-Miocene, with the three sister species diverging about 7 million years ago (Shao et al. 2019). This is consistent with an hypothesis of progressive speciation triggered by the climate changes associated with the rise of the Tibetan plateau, with the later time frame reflecting tectonic changes in mainland China and the separation of Taiwan from the mainland. These analyses are moderately robust, being based on multiple samples and a diverse suite of molecular markers, but further work is clearly needed to better understand phylogeny of the flattened-leaf clade.

Description

Trees to 50 m tall and 130 cm dbh, with a pyramidal crown. Bark gray, irregularly flaking. Branchlets yellowish green or yellowish gray, turning pale gray or brownish gray; glabrous. Leaves directed forward on upper side of branchlets, spreading on lower side, quadrangular-linear, straight or slightly curved, broadly quadrangular in cross section, 8-13×1.2-1.7 mm, with 4-5 stomatal lines along each surface; apex acuminate. Seed cones maturing yellow-brown, ovoid, 5-8×2.5-4 cm. Seed scales obovate, 14-17×10-14 mm, exposed part not striate, apex variable. Seeds obovoid, 3-4 mm, with an 8-11 mm pale brown wing. Pollination April, seed maturity October (Wu and Raven 1999). See García Esteban et al. (2004) for a detailed characterization of the wood anatomy.

Distribution and Ecology

China: Gansu, Hebei, Hubei, Nei Mongol, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Sichuan; at 1400-2800 m elevation (Wu and Raven 1999). Hardy to Zone 5 (cold hardiness limit between -28.8°C and -23.3°C) (Bannister and Neuner 2001).

Distribution of all species in the Picea asperata complex; data from GBIF (2026). P. wilsonii shown in blue-green. Data have been edited to remove location duplicates, remove collections with coordinate uncertainty >10 km, and remove obvious extralimital occurrences. Specimens have not been checked and some may be misidentified. Click on any point for more info.

Remarkable Specimens

The oldest reported living tree was 200 years old (crossdated) in 2006, growing on Yuzhong in Gansu at 2600 m elevation (Liu et al. 2019, citing Wang et al. 2006).

Ethnobotany

Used for afforestation and as an ornamental. The timber is used for furniture, construction, and pulp (Wu and Raven 1999).

Observations

No data as of 2026-10-22.

Remarks

The epithet honors the collector, Ernest Henry Wilson (1876-1930), famous east Asian plant-hunter in the "Indiana Jones" tradition (except he was known as "Chinese Wilson"); he wrote a number of engaging books about his adventures, such as A Naturalist in Western China. Rehder (1930) remembers, "he was a born plant collector; endowed with a strong physique, robust health, indomitable will power and a deep love of plants he succeeded in collecting and introducing into cultivation a greater number of plants than any other collector."

Citations

Liu, Jiajia, Bao Yang, and David B Lindenmayer. 2019. The oldest trees in China and where to find them. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17(6): 319–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2046.

Lockwood, Jared D., Jelena M. Aleksić, Jiabin Zou, et al. 2013. A new phylogeny for the genus Picea from plastid, mitochondrial, and nuclear sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 69(3):717–727. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2013.07.004.

Masters, M. T. 1903. Chinese Conifers. Gardeners Chronicle ser. 3. 33:133. Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2020.11.28 (includes photo and drawing).

Rehder, Alfred. 1930. Ernest Henry Wilson. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 11(4):180-192. Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2020.11.28 (includes photo).

Shao, Cheng-Cheng, Ting-Ting Shen, Wei-Tao Jin, et al. 2019. Phylotranscriptomics resolves interspecific relationships and indicates multiple historical out-of-North America dispersals through the Bering land bridge for the genus Picea (Pinaceae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 141:106610. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2019.106610.

Sullivan, Alexis R., Bastian Schiffthaler, Stacey Lee Thompson, et al. 2017. Interspecific plastome recombination reflects ancient reticulate evolution in Picea (Pinaceae). Molecular Biology and Evolution 34(7):1689–1701. doi:10.1093/molbev/msx111.

Wang Y., Gou X., Liu P., and Chen F. 2006. Change of spring temperature in Yuzhong of Gansu Province during recent 200 years. Journal of Desert Research 26(2):283-285.

See also

Liu, Yifu, Wenfa Xiao, Fude Wang, et al. 2024. Species divergence and environmental adaptation of Picea asperata complex at the whole genome level. Ecology and Evolution 14(8):e70126. doi:10.1002/ece3.70126.

Lyu, Le‐Ke, Dong‐Lei Wang, Long Li, et al. 2021. Polyphyly and species delimitation of Picea brachytyla (Pinaceae) based on population genetic data. Journal of Systematics and Evolution 59(3):515–523. doi:10.1111/jse.12584.

Shen, Ting-Ting, Jin-Hua Ran, and Xiao-Quan Wang. 2019. Phylogenomics disentangles the evolutionary history of spruces (Picea) in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau: implications for the design of population genetic studies and species delimitation of conifers. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 141:106612. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2019.106612.