The Red Spruce tree (Picea rubens)

For this week's look at various trees that we plant at Replant.ca Environmental, I'm going to focus on the red spruce.  As is common with many different tree species, this one is known by many names.  The other names that I'm most accustomed to hearing are eastern spruce, Maritime spruce, and yellow spruce.  The Latin name is Picea rubens.

Red spruce is an extremely common and valuable tree in eastern Canadian forestry.  Due to its versatility and economic value, it is the most commonly planted tree in the Maritime provinces.  Although it isn't the fastest-growing conifer, it is considered to be a late succession tree.  This means that it "catches up and wins," like the tortoise in the fable of "the tortoise and the hare."  The red spruce can often live to be 250-400 years old.

When the red spruce is young, it prefers to grow in moist soils.  It helps if the groundwater moisture is aerated.  Well-drained soils, or soils that are moistened by flowing water, are ideal.  However, red spruce is quite versatile, and will still thrive in many other types of ground conditions.  Red spruce is quite biologically similar to black spruce (a species which does really well in swampy areas with more stagnant water).  Red spruce is also extremely shade-tolerant when it is young.  This is important, because spruce trees generally grow more slowly than other conifers (such as pine) for the first decade or two.  Due to this slower start, spruce usually fail to get above competing grass and vegetation for several years.  However, they don't usually get choked out by plant competition due to their shade tolerance.

When a red spruce matures, it can be twenty to twenty-five meters in height (seventy to eighty feet).  A mature tree will often achieve a DBH (diameter at breast height) of 50cm to 60cm (up to two feet).  Red spruce often grows straighter than conifers such as red pine and white pine.  Although the red spruce doesn't grow as large as an eastern white pine, it's a beautiful and long-lived species in its own right.  Perhaps this is why the red spruce is the provincial tree of Nova Scotia.

Red spruce is mostly an eastern Canadian and northeast US seaboard species.  Here's a range map, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Spruce needles and balsam fir needles often look very similar to someone who doesn't spend a lot of time in the woods.  However, there's a neat trick that you can do to distinguish between them.  Spruce needles are four-sided.  When you put a needle between two fingers and try to "roll" it, it rolls easily.  Balsam fir needles are three-sided but their shape is like a very flattened triangle.  Due to this shape, balsam fir needles don't roll easily between your fingers.  This trick can still be a bit confusing.  If you use a lot of pressure, it's still possible to "roll" the needles of a balsam fir.  And if the spruce needles are sticky or if your fingers are rough, they don't necessarily roll perfectly.  However, if you are out in the woods and see two trees that look slightly different, and you think one is a spruce and one is a fir, try the needle-roll test.  Also, try grabbing a branch and squeezing.  Be careful though!  Spruce needles are much more pointy at the ends, so they'll feel a lot more prickly than fir needles.

If you're looking at the trunk of a juvenile tree, the appearance of spruce and fir are quite different.  Spruce trees will look scaly, and usually have a yellowish-brown or reddish-brown colour.  They will also have more needles on the trunk.  Conversely, a juvenile balsam fir tree will usually have grey bark, and it's usually quite smooth with almost no needles, except maybe some spare needles on the top foot or so of the tree.  The bark of each of these trees becomes much more rough as the trees passes the juvenile stage.  Both types of trees will develop vertical furrows on the bark, although the furrows will be more pronounced on spruce trees.

Take a close look at the underside of this red spruce branch.  What obvious colour patterns do you see?

When you look at a red spruce branch on a young tree, the new growth has a yellowish tinge, and the older growth has a brownish tinge.

Here are four interesting facts about the red spruce:

1.  This tree is monoecious.  This means that individual flowers (cones) are either male or female, but both sexes can be found on the same tree.  The cones are cross-pollinated by wind.

2.  Red spruce trees do not do well in areas with high atmospheric pollution, or "acid rain" (rain contaminated by industrial smoke and chemicals).  This is one more reason to keep our earth clean.  There's a slogan that says, "The solution to pollution is dilution."  I think a better solution is to avoid polluting in the first place.

3.  Red spruce is the most sought-after wood for making most musical instruments.

4.  Spruce twigs can be boiled with sugar, and the resulting liquid can be used to make spruce beer.  I think a lot of people would prefer spruce beer to hemlock tea.


As I mentioned, the red spruce is the most economically valuable species in the Maritime provinces, and is planted very frequently in post-logging operations.  Unfortunately, in that type of work, the logging companies generally plant it as a monoculture.  At Replant.ca Environmental, we endorse biodiversity.  Red spruce is definitely an important species within our planting mixes, but we never plant it by itself.  Here's a photo of some of our red spruce seedlings:

Thanks for reading ...

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!



Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

The Eastern White Cedar tree (Thuja occidentalis)

The Eastern white cedar is known by many names, but the most common alternatives are the northern white cedar, the swamp cedar, or the eastern arborvitae.  The Latin name for this tree is Thuja occidentalis.

You won't often hear rural dwellers referring to this tree as the arborvitae.  That term arborvitae is somewhat confusing.  Many horticulturalists use it.  However, arborvitae really refers to the entire Thuja s. genus, which includes five different species.  The only other arborvitae is the western red cedar, which we plant very frequently in BC's western coastal areas.  Incidentally, the word arborvitae comes from two separate words:  Arbor, meaning "tree," and vitae, meaning "life."  The implication is "tree of life."

When you look at the taxonomic classification of the Thuja genus, they belong to a family known as Cupressaceae, or more commonly known in English as cypress.  That's right, the north American cedars are not even true cedars!  Sigh.  Why is tree classification so confusing?  True cedars are only found natively in the Mediterranean and in the Himalayas.  Let's get back to our "fake" cedar, the eastern white cedar.

Perhaps the most unique thing about cedar trees is the appearance of the needles.  Cedar branches look very different than most other conifers, due to the flattened shape of the needles:

You can see that the needles almost look like scales.

When an eastern white cedar tree develops cones, they are quite small - only about one centimeter long.  Each cone contains approximately eight seeds, however, the cones grow in very dense clusters.  They start off as a yellowish colour, but then eventually turn to a fairly dark shade of brown.  Here's a photo showing some immature cones that are still developing:

This species is not a large one.  These trees rarely grow to be more than 15-25 meters in height (about 50-80 feet).  However, even though they're usually not nearly as tall as many of the other mature conifer species in eastern Canada, their trunks can still grow fairly thick, sometimes reaching almost a meter in diameter (3 feet) at maturity.  These measurements are typical for trees growing in the United States.  When they're found in Canada, they're usually slightly smaller.

Cedar trees taste great, at least to deer.  And that's a big problem.  Deer are especially attracted to these trees.  Exploding deer populations are causing all kinds of problems in many parts of Canada.  In the town that I grew up in, in central Nova Scotia, the deer can be found everywhere throughout town, and ravage people's gardens and shrubbery.  Cedar trees are one of the favorite species for deer to eat, and this is having a negative impact on cedar populations all over eastern North America.

On the west coast, when we plant cedar, we sometimes also install "browse protection devices" over the trees.  A browse protector usually looks like a tall thin plastic cone, about three feet tall.  We place a four-foot cedar stake beside a freshly planted cedar tree, and pound this stake into the ground with a mallet so it is firmly anchored, then place the cone over both the cedar seedling and the stake.  The cone is then tied to the stake so it will remain in place for several years.  The cones are translucent, which allows enough sunlight to reach the tree for photosynthesis.  The tree grows up inside the cone for approximately 3-5 years, then the crew goes back into the plantation to remove the cones, so they can be re-used on another project.  This system seems to work fairly well for letting the cedar seedlings become established until the trees are large enough that the deer start to ignore them (the deer prefer very young seedlings that are closer to the ground).  Here's a photo of a browse cone, protecting a freshly planted young cedar:

Cedar trees can live for a very, very long time.  Here's an interesting story:  There is an old eastern white cedar located on the shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.  The Ojibwa refer to this tree as the Little Cedar Spirit Tree.  The first known written reference to this specific tree happened way back in 1731, by a French explorer named Sieur de la Verendrye.  The Ojibwa often leave tobacco around the tree as an offering to help protect them on voyages on Lake Superior.  Despite this tree being quite famous, that doesn't mean that it's one of the oldest.  It could be, but some eastern white cedars can live to be more than a thousand years old!  Why would anyone ever want to cut one of these trees down?

Although this species prefers very moist climates, it has managed to carve out a fairly large footprint in eastern Canada by taking advantage of conditions where other larger and faster-growing trees have problems thriving.  These cedar trees can survive on rocky cliffs, and in very moist swampy areas.  In that sense, this cedar is a good species to mix with black spruce when the ground conditions are appropriately moist.  Although eastern white cedar isn't found commonly throughout Nova Scotia or in the eastern half of Prince Edward Island, it has a wide range throughout the rest of eastern and central Canada and the northeastern United States.  Here's a range map, courtesy of Wikipedia:

I want to leave you with a few interesting facts about this species:

1.  When a branch falls from an eastern white cedar, it can sometimes lay out new roots into the ground and grow into a new tree, if the conditions are just right!

2.  The inner bark of this tree is tough enough to make into string or rope.

3.  Some people plant this species in their back yards specifically to attract wildlife.  Besides deer, rabbits and many types of birds are also attracted to this tree.


For the 2020 planting season, we included several thousand eastern white cedars in our species mixes at Replant.ca Environmental.  We planted these trees in areas with more moisture or shade, including understory areas, near streams, and in swampy areas.  Even though they are one of the less voluminous conifers in our mixes, and there is a higher risk of some mortality due to deer browsing, we feel that these are a very beneficial species to add to our mixes.  Here's a photo of some of our eastern white cedar seedlings:

Thanks for reading ...

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!



Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

The Jack Pine tree (Pinus banksiana)

Let's take a look at another pine tree that we plant, the Jack Pine.  This tree is also referred to as the scrub pine, the grey pine, the Hudson Bay pine, or the Banksian pine.  The latter name is due to its Latin name, Pinus banksiana.  The term "scrub pine" seems somewhat dismissive.  Where is the love?

To be fair, the Jack pine is not the most impressive species out there.  We mix some Jack pine into our species mixes sometimes, but that's more for diversity than because it's a major contributor to carbon capture.  We also plant two other types of pine (Norway and Eastern White) in larger quantities.  Still, diversity is important.  What happens if global warming raises average temperatures by several degrees over the next few decades?  This could have a seriously negative effect upon many of the species currently growing in Canada, and we think that Jack pine is the conifer that is least likely to be affected if temperatures do get that high (eastern white pine being the second least vulnerable).

Here's a photo of some Jack pine trees, courtesy of Wikipedia.  I'll try to replace this photo with one of my own at some point:

The range of the Jack pine is quite broad.  There are a lot of different species of pine trees in the world (about 120, depending on whom you ask).  In western Canada, you can find about twenty different pine species, four of which I've planted while working in commercial operations.  In eastern Canada, you can find about thirteen species, three of which we plant at Replant.ca Environmental.  As far as I'm aware, Jack pine has the largest geographic distribution range within Canada (of the pines).  Here's a graphic from Wikipedia to illustrate that:

Despite its broad range and hardiness, the reason that Jack pine is often omitted from "favorite tree" lists is because it doesn't grow as large as some other types (such as Eastern white pine), and the trunk doesn't often grow as straight or majestically.  Due to this, many foresters and carpenters don't get as excited by Jack pine as they do by other types of pine, although to be honest, this probably has saved more than a few individual trees from the axe.  Under good growing conditions, Jack pine usually only reaches a height of 15-20 meters at maturity (50-65 feet), and the trunk doesn't often exceed a diameter of about 50 centimeters (one and a half feet).  As mentioned, the trunks can often be twisted or knotty, so when it is used commercially, it is often more likely to be used for pulpwood than for lumber.

Jack pines can be affected by quite a few diseases.  There are weevils and sawflies and budworms that attack the trees.  Jack pine can also be affected by a disease called sweet fern blister rust.  When this happens, Jack pine is an inadvertent victim.  Normally, sweet fern blister rust affects sweet ferns, but the spores can drift onto Jack pine and attack the trees too.

Jack pine is somewhat similar to lodgepole pine, which we plant very frequently on commercial projects all over the west coast.  Like lodgepole pine, the cones of Jack pine tend to open during periods of extreme heat (including wildfires).  Remember that occasional mild wildfires can be beneficial to the overall forest ecosystem.  However, Jack pine don't regrow in densities as thick as lodgepole does after a fire.  Also, on a mature tree, the Jack pine cones look quite different because they usually point forward along the branches.

When trying to identify a pine tree, it's always important to see how many needles come in each cluster.  Each pine species is quite distinct, usually having either two, three, or five needles per cluster.  Jack pine is a two-needle pine.

When I talked about eastern white pine, I mentioned one of Tom Thomson's famous paintings, "Byng Inlet, Georgian Bay."  The Jack pine is featured in an even more well-known painting by Tom Thomson, entitled "The Jack Pine."  That painting is currently held by the National Galley of Canada.  Here's an image of that very recognizable painting, courtesy of the NGC:

Although the Jack pine will probably never feature heavily in our mixes, we have to give it credit for being sturdy and hardy, which is why this species is the most common tree found throughout Canada!  I'll leave you with a photo of some of our Jack pine seedlings:

Thanks for reading ...

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

 

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

The Eastern Hemlock tree (Tsuga canadensis)

Today I'm going to talk about one of the longest-lived of the trees on Canada's east coast, the Eastern hemlock.  Some of you also might know it as Canadian hemlock, or even as eastern hemlock-spruce.  I'm not a fan of that last name, because it confuses people.  Eastern hemlock is not a spruce conifer!  But speaking of names, this species has a Latin name which I find easiest to remember of all Latin names:  Tsuga canadensis.  I guess that's because I'm a proud Canadian.

Before I get into too much detail about this species, let's start with a photo.  This is a good close-up photo showing just a handful of the several thousand eastern hemlock seedlings that we planted this year (2019).

There are three types of hemlocks in Canada, although they all have very narrow distributions.  Western hemlock and mountain hemlock are only found in BC, and mostly in coastal parts of that province.  I've planted large numbers of both of these species while doing commercial reforestation work on Vancouver Island.  So despite the fact that eastern hemlock is not widely distributed throughout most of Canada, it is still the most well-known hemlock.  It can be found throughout all three of the maritime provinces, and also in southern parts of Ontario and Quebec.  Here's a range map, courtesy of Wikipedia:

It's interesting that eastern hemlock does so well throughout southeastern Canada and the northeast seaboard of the US, considering that most hemlocks thrive in temperate rainforests.  The two west coast hemlocks definitely thrive in the moist areas of the coast, and with the exception of the Ancient Rainforest area east of Prince George, almost all west coast hemlocks grow within a hundred kilometers of the Pacific ocean.

The hemlock family got its name from a perceived similarity between the smell of crushed hemlock (conifer) needles and the crushed hemlock plant, even though the plant is completely unrelated to the conifer tree family.  You may be aware that hemlock is well known as a poisonous plant, but hemlock trees thankfully are not toxic! Incidentally, let me take a complete tangent from this post, in case you're trying to remember where you heard about hemlock plants being poison.  Back in ancient Greece, the famous philosopher Socrates went on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens (encouraging anti-democratic uprisings).  He was tried by an assembly of 500 citizens, the majority of whom decided that he was guilty, and was subsequently sentenced to death by poisoning.  At the execution, he calmly agreed to drink the poison down, and that was the end of him.  Plato and Aristotle, two other historical figures that you might be acquainted with if you've studied philosophy (or are a Monty Python fan), were two of his most famous students at the time.  And incidentally, the poisonous hemlock plant is found in twelve US states.  But I digress.  Let's get back to the conifer.

I mentioned earlier that eastern hemlock trees are quite long lived.  Indeed!  They would make any octagenarian jealous.  It is very common for mature trees to live for 250-400 years, if they aren't knocked down in a bad windstorm.  There is one eastern hemlock in Pennsylvania that is going to hit it's 600th birthday in a few decades.  That's pretty impressive.

On Canada's east coast, mature trees often reach a height of about 30m (100 feet) and the trunk of these trees can often approach 1.5m in diamater (almost five feet).  Our Charles Clark forest reserve property in north central Nova Scotia has a belt through the center of the property with almost twenty acres that hasn't been cut in about a century, and it is full of beautiful mature hemlocks.  This part of the property almost feels like a rainforest when you visit it.  In many parts of the US, hemlock trees are only found at elevations of 600 meters and above (cooler climate), but our Charles Clark property is only about 40m above sea level.

Unfortunately, the eastern hemlock is susceptible to two major pests right now.  The first is an "adelgid" (similar to an aphid) known as the woolly hemlock adelgid.  This insect was introduced to north American accidentally from Asia, and eastern hemlock is not resistant to it.  Canadian hemlocks haven't been hit too hard yet, but the adelgid is really doing a lot of damage to stands east of the Appalachians.  The other problem insect is the hemlock looper, which is a type of moth that eats hemlock (and several other common Canadian trees).  Eastern hemlock is also susceptible to a couple varieties of the Armillaria fungus, which is a widely distributed forest parasite (a small mushroom) that attacks many different species.  However, Armillaria (also known colloquially as honey mushrooms) are generally only a problem for mature hemlock.

Another problem that eastern hemlock have to cope with when they're young is being used as a snack by deer.  Deer populations in urban areas of Nova Scotia have exploded over the past decade.  I don't know if the same holds true for rural deer, but in town, we see them on our front lawns everywhere, and they've caused an enormous amount of damage to cedar shrubs and several dozen other types of small plants and flowers.  Anyway, deer love to browse on tender plants.  They tend to avoid plants with needles (except for cedar, which they love) and they also tend to avoid plants with strong odors or bitter tastes.  Although hemlock is not their preferred diet, they will sometimes snack on young hemlock trees.  Hemlock tea tastes quite bitter, but yet the deer don't seem to mind if they're quite hungry.  Hemlock tea is bitter enough that most tea drinkers would definitely turn their nose up, although it apparently has a lot of vitamin C.

If you're ever looking to plant conifers on the east coast, and the property already has some existing brush or tree cover, consider the eastern hemlock as one of the species to potentially include in your mix.  The eastern hemlock is very shade tolerant - one of the most shade tolerant conifers in Canada.

I'll leave you with a photo of some of our eastern hemlock seedlings:

 

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

Meet a Major Sponsor: Dirty Boots & Messy Hair

Today, I'd like to introduce you to one of our major sponsors.  They're an organization called

Dirty Boots & Messy Hair

 

Dirty Boots & Messy Hair is a lifestyle brand and educational platform that has dedicated itself to supporting photographers as they navigate the world of business, branding, and creativity.  Initially founded in 2017, DBMH has since developed into a community of hundreds of thousands of dedicated creatives around the world.  With a heavy focus on outdoorsy and adventurous photography, everyone involved with the brand is incredibly passionate about environmental issues and giving back to the planet.  This is exactly why Replant.ca Environmental is so excited to be collaborating with Dirty Boots & Messy Hair!

Before we tell you about some of the other work that Dirty Boots & Messy Hair (DBMH) is involved in, let us share some social links:

Website:

dirtybootsandmessyhair.com

 

Instagram:

www.instagram.com/dirtybootsandmessyhair

That Instagram feed is especially powerful.  Are you surprised that it has almost a million followers?  There's some really stunning photography showcased there.


DBMH is a major sponsor of the trees planted by Replant.ca Environmental.  Starting in early 2019, the DBMH organization committed to planting tens of thousands of trees annually.  So if you're a photographer who supports DBMH and is a participant in the DBMH community, you're also helping to support global reforestation efforts, and helping with the fight against climate change.


Dirty Boots & Messy Hair is not only involved with reforestation.  They're also involved with other organizations that do work to leave a positive lasting legacy on our planet.  A good example is The Orangutan Project.  The Orangutan Project was established in 1998 by world-renowned orangutan expert, Leif Cocks.  Leif is a passionate campaigner and a key player in developing conservation plans for the protection and survival of orangutans, including the first ever successful reintroduction of a zoo-born orangutan into the wild.  The Dirty Boots & Messy Hair organization is a major supporter of The Orangutan Project.  Learn more about their support at this link:

dirtybootsandmessyhair.com/we-care

Dirty Boots & Messy Hair refers to itself as, "A small business with a big mission: To help save the world."  Big mission, and big hearts.

If you're a professional photographer, you'll want to become a member of the DBMH community!  Organizations like DBMH give us hope for our childrens' futures.  Check them out today!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

Calling on Artists for a Music Compilation of Tree Planting Songs

There are a lot of great songs about tree planting, written by various talented Canadian planters.  I'd like to see some of those shared to a wider audience, therefore, I'm going to use Replant.ca Environmental to sponsor the production of a compilation of songs about tree planting, by tree planters.

Edit:  This compilation is now complete.  It was very well received, and we'll be publishing another volume in 2024.  Please contact us if you're interested in participating, but in the meantime, here's a link to the 2020 compilation:

The Flagging Tapes, Vol. 1

Back to the original post ...

I'm aware of two previous planting music compilations:  "Planters' Punch" and "Hi & Ho, We Plant Trees."  You can find both of these by going to my public Dropbox folder at replant.ca/dropbox and then going into the "Canadian Reforestation" sub-folder, then into the "Planting Music" sub-folder.  All of the songs from these compilations have been shared publicly with permission of the organizers of the CD's (Michael & Peter).

Planters' Punch was compiled by Michael Mloszewski.  Click on his name to learn more background about Michael.  This compilation was put together in the late 1990's, if my information is correct.  Although all the songs were written or performed by planters, some don't actually have planting as the theme to the lyrics.

Hi & Ho, We Plant Trees was organized and compiled by Peter Krahn, who is still a very active member of our planting community.  I believe that this double album may have been released around 2005?  All of the songs on this album have planting as the central theme.  I've heard many of these songs when getting into crew trucks at various companies.

Anyway, it's time for a new album.  I've already been contacted by more than half a dozen planters who want to contribute songs to the album.  Artists will have to agree to have their songs published (internet) for free downloading.  None of the music will be sold, and no physical CD's will be produced.  There will be an independent panel of judges who review all submissions, to ensure that they meet a certain minimal level of quality.  Artists will be encouraged to register their songs with SOCAN in order to qualify for any potential public broadcast royalties.

This compilation will be made available at no cost to the planting community.

---------------------

 

Edit, February 2020:  This album is now available as a free download!  Visit:

www.replant.ca/theflaggingtapes

---------------------

Artists who are in the central Maritime provinces can have their tracks recorded for this compilation at my own studio (no cost), if they'd like.  I'll be located in Sackville, New Brunswick.  I'll be able to do recording sessions between mid-December and mid-January.  For anyone who is located too far away for this, you'll have to find a way to get a professional-sounding recording done on your own, at your own expense.  Home studio recordings are fine, as long as they sound good.  Once the songs are collected, I'll get the collection mastered properly.  That process will start around January 20th, 2020, so ideally all tracks need to be submitted by about January 15th.

If anyone else is interested in contributing to this project, please email me at jonathan.scooter.clark@gmail.com and give me a bit of information about your music.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to release this compilation by mid-February at the latest, before my spring coastal season starts.

Thanks for your interest, and please share this with other planter-musicians.

- Scooter
www.replant-environmental.ca

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

The White Spruce tree (Picea glauca)

For this week's featured species, we're going to look at the White Spruce.  The proper Latin name for this species is Picea glauca.  White spruce is sometimes referred to as "Canadian spruce," although that's not an official name of any sort.


Some people refer to Engelmann spruce as white spruce, but that's a different species.  Engelmann spruce is found at elevation in southern BC at the western US.  Engelmann spruce is often crossed with true white spruce to create a hardy hybrid that is planted all over western Canada.

Here's a photo that I took of a white spruce, which I believe was probably about 30-40 years old:

The white spruce is a very plentiful tree.  It's very healthy, and has a broad range.  You can find this species all across Canada, except for the very southern reaches of BC and Alberta, and the west coast of BC (where Sitka spruce takes over).  Here's a range map from Wikipedia:

Spruce trees, in general, love water.  They typically prefer flowing (aerated) water, although black spruce can thrive in some pretty fetid swampy areas.  White spruce is certainly quite happy to grow in moisture-laden soils.  White spruce, like all other spruce trees, is also a very shade-tolerant tree.  However, it is slightly less shade tolerant than red spruce (red spruce is a common tree in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia).  Regardless, white spruce will do adequately when planted under a canopy, or in areas with high brush and vegetation competition.  However, white spruce seedlings can be susceptible to spring frosts.  Having brush or a mature canopy over young seedlings acts to protect them until they're older.

When I was very young, I thought that all cones, regardless of what species of conifer the cone came from, were called pine cones.  Of course, that was that naivete of a young child.  The cones on spruce trees are called spruce cones.  White spruce has two types of cones, male and female.  Each tree contains both types.  The male cones produce pollen, which floats to the female cones to fertilize the seed.  After the cones are fertilized, it takes about three months for them to mature and open.  When the cones open, the seed is dispersed fairly far from the tree, due to small wings on each seed.  It is common for seed to spread more than 100m from the parent tree, thanks to winds.  Although the number of seeds per cone varies, there are usually at least a few dozen seeds in a cone, and sometimes more than a hundred.
 

A mature white spruce will often live to be more than 200 years old.  Some trees live to be many times older than that.  After the first century, as long as the site and growing conditions are adequate, a white spruce will often reach 30m (100 feet) in height, and can have a diameter of more than a meter (3 feet) at the base.  This species can capture very large amounts of carbon.  Our Walker Road property has some beautiful mature white spruce that are starting to approach this size.

Although we don't harvest any of our trees at Replant.ca Environmental, white spruce is often used in the manufacture of acoustic guitars.

One way to distinguish white spruce from red spruce is by the colour of the needles.  The white spruce needles are a bluish-green shade, in contrast to the more yellow-green shade of red spruce needles.

This year, we've planted many thousands of white spruce seedlings at Replant.ca Environmental.  Here's a photo of some of them:

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.