white spruce

noun

1. a spruce, Picea glauca, of northern North America, having bluish-green needles and silvery-brown bark.

2. the light, soft wood of this tree, used for pulp and in the construction of boxes, crates, etc.

white spruce

noun

1. a N North American spruce tree, Picea glauca, having grey bark, pale brown oblong cones, and bluish-green needle-like leaves

Word History and Origins

Origin of white spruce¹

First recorded in 1760–70

Example Sentences

Some held that white spruce pointed to a climate similar to modern Canada or Alaska.

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Ryan Sullivan, a Nature Conservancy field ecologist, measures the growth of a white spruce seedling.

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Last year was a “mast year,” he said, when white spruce trees produce a superabundance of cones, the squirrels’ favorite food.

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I had to cut a mile-long portage through bush and forest up to a beaver lake, where I cleared a site for the cabin amid stands of white spruce, birch and cottonwood trees.

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In the northernmost boreal forests of Alaska, where trees and tundra meet, Griffin and his students have installed thirty-six dendrometers on white spruce trees.

Read more on The New Yorker