Five of the forty or so spruce species are native to Canada. More lumber and pulp are made from spruce than from any other tree.

White Spruce Picea glauca (Latin, bluish-green, referring to the bluish tint of the needles), ‘pinette blanche,’ is the most widely distributed tree in North America. Some fossilized spruce is 65 million years old. Springy branches help spruce survive the burden of snow weight in deep winter. First Peoples used the flexible roots of White Spruce to sew up birchbark canoes, rogans, and other vessels required to be watertight.

Black Spruce Picea mariana (Botanical Latin, of Maryland ),‘pinette noire,’ also known as Bog Spruce or Swamp Spruce. The specific epithet was added by Philip Miller (1691-1771), writer of a useful Dictionary of Gardens (1731). Maryland symbolized the North American bounty of species to this British curator of the Physic Garden at Chelsea. I will add one corrective note of dendrological fact: Black Spruce does not grow in Maryland.

Sitka Spruce Picea sitchensis (Botanical Latin, of Sitka, Alaska ), grows all along our Pacific coast, on Vancouver Island, and thrives on the Queen Charlotte Islands. The tallest spruce, it attains heights of 60 metres, making for long, clear boards of sawn lumber and contributing to this wood’s importance as a timber-producer in B.C. The Salish, the Nootka, and other First Peoples of British Columbia make Sitka spruce baskets and craftwork.

Spruce Root Shot Baskets of the Tlingit People, Sitka, Alaska. Small cylindrical double baskets, one inside the other, were used to store a variety of precious objects. In the 1800s these came to be used as shot pouches.

The Uses of Spruce(s)

Spruce Tea: “The Great Antiscorbutic Elixir of the Canadas, Most Easily Made and Necessary To Be Had by All Persons There Resident”

Scurvy was a vitamin C deficiency disease that was rampant among the first European immigrants to the New World. Many a spindly scorbutic wretch was snatched from the Grim Reaper’s clutch by a humble mug of spruce tea, whose recipe was passed to whites by different tribes of First Peoples.

One recipe is given here with the caution that you make certain which fir twigs you have collected. Yew, for example, is poisonous. Better not brew yew and it’ll do you. Also, quaff not quarts of spruce or any other evergreen tea. Try a modest cup for interest. If you have scurvy (unlikely), see a doctor and chew vitamin C tablets on the way to the appointment. Don’t pick White Spruce twigs to make tea. Its resin is too overpowering.

If you are botanizing in eastern British Columbia or western Alberta, avoid Engelmann spruce. Its resin really stinks. Try Black Spruce, while remembering that some other conifers make pleasanter-smelling teas. Maritimers claim their native Red Spruce, Picea rubens, makes a most palatable infusion.

Recipe for Spruce Tea: Collect twig tips of fresh, young growth in late spring. Put a fistful of twigs in a warm pot. Fill pot with water heated to a rolling boil. Steep about five minutes. Sweeten with honey or maple syrup. Spice with a dust of cinnamon, a zest of orange peel, a nail or two of cloves, or bob dried blueberries in this fragrant tea.

In olden days, molasses was added to the steeped tea and it was left for days to ferment into a spruce beer with a very high vitamin C content. This type of tea was the famous antiscorbutic brew that saved Cartier and his men, and many other intrepid adventurers including Captain Cook and his sailors from death by scurvy. But different aboriginal peoples used different fir trees. For example, Cartier and his men were rescued by an infusion made from twigs of Eastern White Cedar.

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The Word Lore of Spruce

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