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A tree, attaining 100–120 feet in height, with a stem 2 to 3 feet in diameter above Its enlarged base. Branches crowded to the ground, with slender, pendulous branchlets, which are often 7 to 8 feet in length and sparsely covered in their first and second seasons with greyish pubescence. Pulvini long and slender, directed forwards. Leaves often nearly an inch long, rounded on both surfaces, the dorsal surface keeled and bearing 10 to 12 rows of stomata, the ventral surface dark green, shining with a prominent midrib, apex obtuse or short pointed. The leaves, on account of the shoots being pendulous, are radially arranged (never pseudo-distichous), their apices pointing outwards and downwards.

Cones on short stalks (¼ inch), oblong-cylindrical, gradually narrowed from the middle to each end, 2½ to 5 inches long by ¾ to 1 inch wide; scales broadly obovate with entire rounded margins; bracts minute, concealed, oblong, with denticulate upper margin. Seed with long wing (three times the length of the seed itself). The cones are pendent, greenish, or purplish green when fully grown, becoming dull brown when ripe, and open to let out the seed in autumn, but generally remain on the branches till the winter of the following year.

This tree has a more limited range than any other spruce, being confined, so far as we know at present, to a few stations in northern California and southwestern Oregon, on the Siskiyou Mountains, where it was discovered at an elevation of about 7000 feet, in June 1884, by Mr. Thomas Howell, who directed me to the best place from which the locality can be approached, a settlement called Waldo, about 40 miles west of Grant's Pass station, on the Southern Pacific Railway.

I went to this station in August 1904 with the intention of visiting Waldo; but finding that Messrs. Jack and Rehder, of the Arnold Arboretum, had just returned, and hearing from them that there were no cones on the trees in that year, I did not feel inclined to spend three days on the trip. I am, however, much indebted to these able botanists for the following information, and especially to Mr. Rehder for a beautiful negative of the tree, which is here reproduced (Plate 29).

There seems to be only a small grove of the trees about 20 miles south of Waldo, over the Californian boundary, which is best reached by following the trail to Happy Camp, and turning west near the summit of the pass to a place called Big Meadows, which is four miles from the pass.

There is another place where it grows near Selma, which is more accessible