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davidrt28

strange conifer seen - possibly Picea breweriana?

davidrt28 (zone 7)
17 years ago

OK, long story short, I went on a drive down to central Virginia today, via Southern Maryland and Rt. 301. At a slightly scary looking run down house/complex along the road, one of those typical places you see in the rural US that has a bunch of junk strewn about the yard, I saw a strange looking conifer that I could not recognize.

It looked like a cross between a small Ceder of Lebanon and a spruce, but with an odd semi-weeping form. It looked like a weeping species, not a weeping cultivar. I know in a general sense of something called a "weeping spruce" so I looked that up. That might have been it, but it doesn't quite match. The plant I saw had a denser form. It might just have been something like a Cedrus deodora that had been pruned in an odd way, but the stem and needle (vs. branch) structure seemed too like a spruce. It was the "main branches horizontal but weeping toward the tips" look of a cedar, even more so, combined with the needles looking more like a spruce. Picea breweriana to me has more of a "rope like main limbs" with "side stems that fall." this plant seemed to have erect side stems along weeping main branches - does that distinction make sense? Oh well. It reminded me that I SHOULD always take my camera with me on such trips. It wasn't the type place I would have been comfortable stopping, and it was on one of those roads where even turning around would be a hassle. If I'm ever in the area again (highly doubtful, until next year at least) I'll remember to bring the digital camera this time.

You see unusual looking plants, sometimes, in the strangest places.

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