Description: Large tree with dark or blue-green foliage and a dense, narrow conical crown of short branches spreading in close rows.

Height: 24-30m, up to 45m in British Columbia

Diameter: 0.5-0.8m

Needles: evergreen; 1.5-2.5 cm long. Spreading on all sides of shoot from very short leafstalks; four-angled, sharp-pointed, slender, flexible; with disagreeable skunk-like odour when crushed; dark green or blue-green, with whitish lines.

Bark: greyish- or purplish-brown; thin, with loosely attached scales.

Twigs: brown, slender, hairy, rough, with peg-like leaf bases.

Cones: 4-6cm long; cylindrical, shiny light brown; hanging at end of leafy twig; cone-scales long, thin and flexible, narrowed and irregularly toothed; paired, blackish, long-winged seeds.

Habitat: Dominant with Subalpine Fir in subalpine zone up to timberline; also with other conifers.

Range: Central British Columbia and SW Alberta southeast to New Mexico; chiefly in Rocky Mountains; at 2400-3700m in the south; down to 600m in north. A variety (var. mexicana (Martínez) R J Taylor & T F Patterson) also occurs in Mexico.

This species was named after George Engelmann (1809-84), a German-born physician and botanist of St. Louis, an authority on conifers. Where its range overlaps, it intergrades completely with Picea glauca. First introduced to the UK in 1809 as the cultivar 'Glauca' (which is presumably one of the intermediate forms - this date is well before the species as such was described), which has reached over 30m in Ross-shire, though 15m is more usual. The type came in 1864 and is still very rare in cultivation here. The finest specimens grow at Dawyck in Peeblesshire and were collected as seedlings in the Rockies by F.R.S. Balfour in 1902. They had reached over 25m in seventy years.

Information: Audubon (1980), Mitchell (1978), Bean III, FNA 2 (1993)

Source: Seed from Chiltern Seeds, Milnthorpe, Cumbria.

Purchased: Seeds arrived 1994.05.06

Planted: The five best seedlings were potted on 1995.02.23, and have been variously repotted since. One has been given away and others have lived outside for some time, but are not yet ready to plant (nor is their intended site ready for them :-).

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