Norway spruce, or European spruce. Spruce - description, properties, photo. What mysteries does the spruce forest hide? Folk methods and recipes for treatment

Spruce is a coniferous evergreen woody plant pine family. There are many species of this forest-forming species (approximately about 50), but the common spruce is considered the most common. The habitat of the tree is located in the forest zone of the Northern Hemisphere. To date, a certain regularity of the territorial habitat of spruce is distinguished. In the northern Caucasus, there are signs of the presence of Caucasian spruce. In the steppe Russian Federation sometimes you can find white spruce. On the territory of Finland, central and northern Europe and the European part of Russia, spruce spruce is common. The life span of the plant is up to 300 years.

All available plant species have good shade tolerance, but develop better with sufficient sunshine. One of the features of spruce properties is its exactingness to air and soil moisture. These trees prefer to breed on loamy and sandy soils without the proximity of groundwater.

If you make a description of spruce, then distinctive features are distinguished, depending on what kind of habitat the tree has. Each species differs in the type of cones, the nature and location of the needles, but still there are general characteristics. Spruce has a regular cone shape and can grow up to 50 m long. Hard needle-shaped needles 2-3 cm long grow on the tree. The trunk of the plant consists of a brownish-gray flaky bark. The branches of this breed bloom in whorls. The root system of spruce is located superficially, and not deep into the soil, which gives the tree an unstable position. Therefore, with strong gusts of wind, common spruce falls frequently. The needles in this breed last up to 5-7 years.

In the spring, the formation of cones begins. Spruce is a monoecious tree and both female and male cones grow on it. Male cones are laid throughout the crown of the tree and contain pollen (a fine yellow powder). Female cones are located at the top of the crown of common spruce and are bright red, green and brown, reaching a length of up to 15. Pollen is released abundantly on various objects, which is noticeable to the naked eye. The spread of this tree species occurs because the cones contain two ovules, from which fertilization begins, and then the development of seeds. Spruce seeds are carried far from the mother tree to dry sunny days final months of winter. Since the habitat of a Russian inhabitant is the European part, the common spruce is growing on the territory.

Useful properties of the plant

Spruce needles are able to secrete into environment substances - phytoncides, which purify and disinfect oxygen and fill with a wonderful coniferous smell. With the help of this forest species, spruce is well used as a large-scale landscaping, but not in urban areas. Only prickly spruce has resistance to the changing conditions of the city.
Among other things, spruce comes from a huge benefit. This tree is used for alternative medicine recipes, for bath and beauty treatments. needles and fir cones trees contain useful qualities that are used in folk medicine. Spruce essential oil, which is found in all parts of this forest species, has an effective anti-inflammatory and disinfecting effect.

Needles are used for antiseptic and antimicrobial effects. One can single out a particularly common recipe when chopped needles are taken and applied to a fresh wound, which quickly heals after such a procedure and, as a rule, does not become inflamed. Also, needles are used to prepare an infusion, which treats any inflammatory, fungal and infectious diseases.

For the prevention of periodontal disease, caries and other dental diseases, Christmas tree resin is used, which must be chewed periodically. This method is also applicable to food poisoning. With the help of resin and wax inhalation, it is possible to reduce the manifestation of bronchitis, clear the airways and increase the body's resistance to the harmful effects of the environment.
Tree cones contain useful for the body essential oils, tannins, vitamin C and many other substances. Such a vitamin complex from spruce cones can alleviate the signs and symptoms of most diseases, since it has an antimicrobial, analgesic, diuretic, anti-inflammatory effect.

What diseases does spruce help with?

This amazing plant it can help with diseases, due to the fact that it contains useful properties that have a positive effect on the final outcome of the pathological disorder and alleviate the symptoms. As healing elements in folk medicine, fir cones, needles, resin and bark of spruce or other species are used and miraculous recipes are prepared from them. The good use of this plant is in such diseases:

• radiculitis;
• osteochondrosis;
• respiratory diseases;
• furunculosis;
• purulent and inflammatory processes;
• diseases of the genitourinary system;
• neurosis and stress;
• viral infections;
• bronchial asthma;
• rheumatism;
• rhinitis and sinusitis;
• scurvy.

In addition, spruce essential oil has a preventive effect. The vitamin complex supports the immune system and prevents the development and complication of many diseases. The use of tinctures and all kinds of other recipes known in folk medicine can have a beneficial effect on the body, improve skin properties, increase tone and relieve signs of nervous and psycho-emotional overstrain.

Folk recipes for using spruce

Description of effective folk remedies to combat pathological conditions:

1. Tincture from tree cones. For cooking healing agent from the cones, you need to take the crushed young cones and pour boiling water in a ratio of 1:5. Next, the mixture must be boiled for half an hour and let it brew for 15 minutes. After cooking, the liquid is decanted, after which a decoction is obtained. brown shade with a specific smell. The resulting remedy from spruce cones is used for inhalation of 20 ml per procedure. This solution is also used to strengthen the immune system. For this, an infusion is taken at the rate of 1:10, poured with water and boiled. For taste, lemon is added and infused for 3 hours. Take half a glass every day in the morning before meals. Store this remedy in a dark, cool place.
2. The description of the following recipe is suitable for the treatment of bronchitis, rhinitis and pneumonia, kidney disease, rheumatism and bronchial asthma. For cooking, you need to take young twigs of spruce with buds and pour a bottle of vodka. Next, the resulting mixture is tightly closed in a glass vessel and infused for 2 weeks. You need to take 3 times a day, 1 glass before meals.
3. Spruce bark makes a good anti-inflammatory patch. To do this, take wax and melted butter, distributed evenly on the cortex and applied to the inflamed area.
4. A drink rich in vitamins and minerals will be obtained from cones and needles of spruce. For cooking, you need to take fir cones and needles, rinse and pour water. Next, you need to boil this composition for 30 minutes and let it brew for half an hour. After the decoction of the cones is cooled and added in uniform proportions to bottles of cranberry juice. Used as needed and stored in the refrigerator.
5. Spruce oil can be used to remove toxins from the body and increase immunity. This remedy is also used for the prevention of skin diseases and disorders of the urinary tract.
6. Helps against scurvy. For this, young needles are taken, crushed and boiled for half an hour. Next, the broth is infused in a warm place for at least 3 hours and consumed at 0.1 liters per day. Such a decoction helps to eliminate the signs of an emerging disease, cleanse the blood of harmful impurities and have a tonic effect on the body.

Spruce Contraindications

From such a noble plant can be not only beneficial, but also harmful. It is not recommended to use any useful parts of this tree for people with peptic ulcer and chronic or acute gastritis. This is due to increased acidity during the disease, and the use of infusions from cones and other coniferous elements further increases acidity and increases the chance of developing or complicating peptic ulcer.

Special attention should be paid to allergy sufferers. After all, even taking a bath with spruce extract causes severe itching, skin rashes, runny nose and swelling. Sometimes this condition threatens a person's life.

The use of spruce massage in the form of brooms during bath procedures can cause circulatory disorders and injure nearby capillaries. This moment is further aggravated by possible overheating in the bath, which gives an additional load on the cardiovascular system.

The use of traditional medicine is good, but do not forget about the individual intolerance of coniferous components. Therefore, before using medicinal product, it is worth reading the description and see if the content contains an allergic product.

Spruce - coniferous evergreen tree pine family. This is a riddle about her: "Winter and summer in one color." The message will take a closer look at these interesting tree, talk about where it grows and how it is used in national economy.

Description

A Christmas tree is a slender tree that can grow up to 35 meters high. The first 10 years it grows very slowly - a few cm per year, then the growth rate increases, but after 100-120 years it slows down again. It has a pyramidal (triangular) crown with a sharp top. The branches are located densely along the entire trunk. It is often difficult to see behind spruce paws.

At young tree the bark is smooth gray-brown in color, in the old bark it becomes gray and peels off in thin plates. The needles are dark green and shiny, sharp and prickly. The needles are much shorter than those of pine, up to 3 cm long.

They firmly hold on the branches for 7-10 years. But in urban conditions, with strong smoke in the air, the life expectancy of the needles is greatly reduced: it falls off after 3 years.

The root system of spruce is located close to the surface, so a strong wind can knock down a tree.

Spruce is a long-liver, she lives 250-300 years.

Where does it grow

She grows throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It can be found, Central and Northern Europe. It is ubiquitous in Russia: in Siberia, the Urals, Far East, in the Caucasus, in steppe zone. It also grows in China and Japan.

In total there are 50 kinds oil. The most common: Siberian, European, Caucasian, Canadian, white, red, black.

The Christmas tree is the basis of the taiga. She grows in mixed forests, well adjacent to, pine, oak, linden, aspen, hazel. It also forms pure spruce forests, which have a number of features:

• it is damp and dark here;
• the soil is completely covered with moss;
• dense thickets of blueberries, lingonberries, oxalis, cuckoo flax grow under spruce paws.

Growing conditions and reproduction

In order for spruce to grow well, it needs the following conditions:

• Shadow. This is a tree not very fond of the sun, young Christmas trees often receive sunburn in open places.
• Sufficient hydration. Christmas tree does not tolerate drought well.
• Temperate climate. The wood is cold hardy not afraid of frost but it doesn't grow well southern regions where the summer is too hot and long,
• The soil should not be too dense, moderately fertile.

Spruce is a monoecious plant. This means that male spikelets and female cones grow on the same tree. Propagated by seeds whose germination is very good. Cones open in late November - early December, the seeds fall out, they are picked up by the wind and spread far around the neighborhood.

In early spring, the seed awakens and begins to grow. The main condition for the sprouts to take root and develop well is a warm spring, because they die during spring frosts.

Use in the national economy

Spruce plantations can often be seen in sanatoriums. Because their needles emit phytoncides that purify and disinfect the air. Also, spruce often becomes the basis of landscapes in personal plots.

Quality musical instruments are made from this tree. Soft wood is used to make paper, rayon, and smokeless powder. Get resin, tar, rosin, turpentine.

Fir cones are widely used in folk medicine. Healers believe that the tree is a donor tree, if you lean against it and stand like that for several minutes, it will give a person energy and strength.

forest guest waiting for New Year kids.

How much joy she brings, filling the house with a special forest smell and pleasing the eye with her beauty!

If this message was useful to you, I would be glad to see you

(lat. Pícea) - a genus of plants of the Pine family (Pináceae), by prevalence among coniferous trees ranks second after pine. Spruce lives - 250-300 years, there are trees up to 500-600 years old. In the USA (Colorado), a long-liver grows - Engelman spruce, whose age is 852 years.

Monoecious trees with a pyramidal crown, whorled branching and interwhorled shoots. The trunk is full-woody, up to 40-50 m high, in some species - up to 80-90 m, with a butt diameter up to 1-2 m, the bark is red-brown or gray, flaky with thin scales; young branches are brown or reddish, glabrous or slightly drooping, with strongly protruding leaf traces, buds ovate-conical, pointed, brownish, non-resinous. The needles are hard, prickly, tetrahedral, in the lower part of the crown - flat (shadow needles), does not fall off for 6-9 years.

Spruce forests (spruce forests) - evergreen dark coniferous forests with a predominance of spruce in the tree layer. They are among the naturally progressive edificators capable of invading other phytocenoses and even displacing them. Spruce forests grow in temperate zone Northern Hemisphere, occupying a significant part of the territory of Europe, Asia and North America.

In Russia they are distributed from western borders to the east. They form the landscape of the taiga zone. total area spruce forests in Russia is about 70 million hectares with a timber reserve of over 10 billion m3. Spruce forests are in fourth place in terms of area after larch, pine and birch forests. In spruce forests, both pure forest stands and mixed with deciduous and coniferous species are formed.

spruce wood

Spruce is a nuclear-free ripe wood species. The wood was white, with a slight yellowish tint, low resinous. Engelman spruce wood is darker - yellowish-brown. Resinous passages are few and small. Spruce wood has a homogeneous structure with annual layers clearly visible in all cuts, disturbed by numerous knots.

Spruce belongs to the species with low density and with a sharp difference in the structure of the early and late wood of the annual layers. The number of annual layers per 1 cm of the cross section and the percentage of late wood depend both on the species and on the place of its growth. So, for example, for common spruce (European) in the north of the European part of Russia, the number of annual rings is 12.1, and the percentage of late wood is 21, for Siberian spruce ( Western Siberia) - 6.5 and 25, respectively, for Eastern Siberia- 9 and 25.

The microroughnesses remaining after processing the surface of spruce wood are 8-60 microns, which is significantly lower than that of hardwoods. Freshly cut spruce wood has a moisture content of about 110%. The maximum humidity at water absorption is 212%.

Moisture conductivity indicators are an important characteristic for choosing the mode of drying wood; the intensity of isothermal transfer of bound water depends on them. The values ​​of the coefficient of moisture conductivity (Dх1010 m2/s) for spruce are presented in the table.

These values ​​differ little from those of pine, but are 1.5-1.8 times higher than those of larch and hardwoods. Spruce, like pine, belongs to low-drying species. The uniform structure of the wood and long fibers make spruce less prone to warping and cracking during the drying process (compared to pine).

Spruce belongs to the species of low density. The average density of spruce wood at standard humidity (12%) is 445 kg/m3, absolutely dry - 420 kg/m3, base density - 365 kg/m3.

The permeability of liquids and gases along the fibers of spruce is slightly higher (by 15-20%) than that of pine, but the difference between the gas permeability in the radial and tangential directions is the largest in spruce (in the radial, more than in the radial, 10 times; in pines - 2-5 times).

In terms of strength properties, spruce wood is somewhat inferior to pine. In terms of long-term resistance to deformation, it is practically not inferior to pine, as well as in another indicator - the ability to hold fasteners. Spruce wood bends somewhat better than pine wood.

In terms of resistance to decay (biological damage), among domestic species, spruce is classified as medium-resistant species (it is noticeably inferior to pine heartwood), according to the European standard EN 350 - 2: 1994, spruce belongs to low-resistant species (pine is moderately resistant).

The generally good machinability of spruce wood is significantly hampered by numerous knots, the hardness of which is often so great that it causes chipping of the blades of the carbide tool.

The use of spruce wood

Spruce is a tree exceptional in its properties. One of these properties is musicality. From ancient times, spruce has been used to make musical instruments, including strings. The Novgorod gusli of medieval Rus' was most often made from spruce.

The upper soundboards of violins, cellos, guitars have long been made of resonant spruce, which provides the instruments with the beauty of sound. She seems to be holding the sound. The requirements for musical wood are special: not to have knots, curls, rolls and other defects. Annual layers should be of the same width, and on a radial cut, straight and parallel.

Spruce musical instruments have an amazing sound, because the fibers in the wood are distributed very evenly (such wood is called resonant). Violins by Italian makers, including Amati and Stradivari, are made from spruce.

In search of good material craftsmen and restorers musical instruments they find wood when dismantling old houses, which, over decades of stable microclimate, acquires truly wonderful musical properties. The fact is that with gradual drying in the capillaries of the resin passages of wood, microscopic resonant chambers are formed, it seems to acquire a voice.

The 19th-century French explorer Savart calculated the speed of sound in spruce wood. It turned out that it is 15-16 times greater than the speed of sound in air. There have been many attempts to replace spruce wood with other types of wood, but none of them were successful. Experts believe that it is unlikely that it will be possible soon to find a material that, in terms of its acoustic properties, will be similar to a resonant spruce.

Spruce wood is difficult to process due to the high hardness of the knots, but in some areas the huts were built entirely from spruce. It was believed that it was easy to breathe in such a hut, there was even a saying: "The hut is a spruce, but the heart is great."

Spruce wood is soft, light, not very durable, used as construction material(boards, beams), for small crafts, for processing into wood pulp.

Spruce is used for the production of wood chemical products - paper and cardboard, cellulose, turpentine, rosin, tar, wood vinegar, methyl alcohol. Volatile fractions of different composition are isolated from needles and wood, consisting mainly of terpenoids - the so-called. essential oils, their main component is pinene.

It is applied in decorative gardening and park building. It is notable for the accuracy and grace of the crown, the slenderness of the trunk, and shade tolerance. The spruce hedge is very thick and almost impenetrable. There are many garden forms and cultivars. Spruce is often used to create windbreaks, especially along roads. Seeds serve as food for forest birds (woodpecker, crossbill) and rodents (mouse, squirrel). Spruce bark is used as a leather tanning agent. Pine needles are often used to prepare coniferous-vitamin flour for livestock feed.

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Picea abies
Taxon: Pine family ( Pinaceae).
Other names: European spruce
English: Norway Spruce, Christmas Tree

Description

Spruce- an elegant, slender evergreen tree up to 30-50 m high of the pine family. The crown of the tree has the shape of a regular narrow cone and descends almost to the ground. The top of the spruce is always sharp, it never dulls. A tall and slender spruce grows only when the topmost bud of the tree blooms normally every year and gives rise to a new shoot. If the apical bud of a young spruce was damaged or the shoot on which it is located was cut off, - appearance tree changes dramatically. The growth of the main trunk stops, the lateral branches closest to the top gradually rise up. As a result, instead of a tall and slender tree, a low and ugly tree is obtained. The trunk of a spruce is covered with flaky brownish-gray bark. The branches are arranged in whorls. The needles are needle-shaped, flattened-tetrahedral, dark green, shiny, 2-3 cm long, kept on branches for 6-12 years. Spruce needles are much shorter than those of pine. The life span of spruce needles is longer than that of pine needles. In spring, spruce, like pine, has male and female cones on its branches. This happens around the time when the bird cherry blossoms. Spruce- the plant is monoecious, male spikelets are located in the lower part of the shoots in the axils of the needles. Female cones are elongated-cylindrical, young ones are bright red, late ones are green, in a mature state they are brown, up to 15 cm long. Pollen resembling a fine yellow powder ripens in male spikelets-knobs. Spruce dusts very plentifully. Pollen is carried by the wind far around, settles on various objects. It is noticeable even on the leaves of forest grasses. Spruce cones, ripening in the first year, are formed by spirally arranged covering scales, in the axils of which there are two ovules, from which seeds develop after fertilization. Seeds are dark brown with wings, similar to pine seeds. Having fallen out of the cone, they circle in the same way in the air like a propeller. Their rotation is very fast, and the fall from this is slow. The seeds picked up by the wind can fly away from the mother tree quite far to the side. Seed dispersal occurs at the end of winter, on dry sunny days.
Unlike pine, spruce is shade-tolerant. Its lower branches do not die off and are preserved, therefore it is dark and damp in spruce forests. spruce root system much smaller than pine and located in the upper soil layer, so the tree is unstable and often strong winds knock him to the ground.
Spruce grows well under the canopy of pine, birch, oak. She, like other shade-tolerant trees, has a dense, dense crown that transmits little light.
One of the features of spruce is its sensitivity to late spring frosts. The return of cold weather in the spring destroys its young, just appeared, not yet strengthened shoots. Young Christmas trees damaged by frost can sometimes be seen at the beginning of summer somewhere in an open place (in a clearing, in a large clearing in the middle of a forest, etc.). Their part of the needles is green, old, and the young shoots are dried, brown, as if set on fire.
In spruce, as in pine, annual rings of wood are clearly distinguished on the transverse section of the trunk. Some annual rings are wider, others are narrower. The width of the growth ring to a large extent depends on the environmental conditions in which the tree grows (temperature, humidity, light, availability nutrients etc.). How better conditions, the wider the ring. In years with especially favorable for the tree weather conditions rings are especially wide. Since spruce creates very strong shading, only fairly shade-tolerant plants can exist under its canopy. There are usually few shrubs in a spruce forest, on the ground there is a solid green carpet of mosses, against which a few taiga grasses and dense thickets of blueberries grow (this type of forest is called blueberry spruce forest). Where the soil is better supplied with nutrients and sufficiently drained, as a rule, a continuous cover of oxalis develops - a small herbaceous plant with trifoliate, like clover, leaves ( given type The forest was called the sorrel spruce forest). On soils, especially poor and very damp ones, under the fir trees there is a continuous rather thick carpet of cuckoo flax moss (the name of such a forest is long-moss spruce forest).
In the spruce forest, as a result of strong shading, shoots of almost all tree species quickly die. However, the undergrowth of spruce itself is preserved for a very long time under these conditions. However, he has a very depressed look. The trees are smaller than a person, similar in shape to an umbrella, their crown seems to be flattened, very loose. Living branches are very thin, with rare short needles, the stem is like a ski pole. If you cut off such a stem in the lower part with a sharp knife, then on the cross section you can see unusually narrow growth rings, almost indistinguishable with the naked eye. They can only be seen with a strong magnifying glass. The reason for this is the fact that in deep shade the tree produces almost no organic matter, and therefore cannot produce much wood.
Sprouts of spruce - almost the same as those of pine. They are quite rare in the forest. This is explained by the fact that a thin, weak root of a germinating seed is often unable to “break through” a powerful layer of dry, fallen needles. But there are many shoots where this obstacle is not present - on rotten tree trunks lying on the ground, on rotten stumps, on recently exposed areas of soil, etc.

Spreading

The area of ​​natural distribution of Norway spruce in our country is almost the entire northern half of the European part. In the northernmost regions of this territory, as well as in the Urals and Siberia, a closely related species grows - Siberian spruce (Picca obovata). Spruce occupies 10% of the forest area, forming spruce forests, is part of mixed, one of the most common tree species. In the European part of the country, spruce does not spread far to the south, as it is quite moisture-loving. East of the Urals, it is replaced by a close species - Siberian spruce, in the Caucasus - eastern spruce.

cultivation

Spruce is propagated by seeds. This tree cannot grow in too dry climates. Does not tolerate spruce and dry soil. In this respect, it is much more whimsical than pine, which grows well on very dry sands. Spruce is more demanding than pine in terms of soil fertility. It does not grow in extremely nutrient-poor upland (sphagnum) bogs.

Collection and preparation

Needles, immature cones, young tops of spruce branches are used as medicinal raw materials. Cones are harvested in the summer before the seeds ripen, dried on racks under a canopy.

Chemical composition

Essential oils, resins, tannins, phytoncides, and minerals were found in the cones. Spruce needles contain ascorbic acid(200-400 mg /%) and the same substances as the cones.

The use of spruce in medicine

A decoction and infusion of cones are used for diseases of the upper respiratory tract and bronchial asthma, needles as an antiscurvy agent, especially in winter time. The needles also have a diuretic, antimicrobial effect. It is recommended for diseases of the kidneys and Bladder. In folk medicine, a decoction of kidneys and young cones is used in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis, scurvy, dropsy, and inflammatory diseases of the respiratory system.

Medications

Infusion of spruce needles: 20-25 g of crushed needles are brewed with boiling water (1:5), boiled for 10 minutes, then infused for 10 minutes, this dose is taken during the day. This infusion is drunk against scurvy and respiratory diseases.
A decoction of spruce cones. The cones are crushed, poured with water (1: 5), boiled for half an hour, the resulting broth is gargled, dripped into the nose. Bath infusion. Paws are boiled with salt, the resulting broth is added to baths for pain in the joints of various origins.
The spruce forest is clean, but it has a depressing effect on a person who communicates little with it, although spruce is a donor tree, not a vampire, but when there are many donors nearby, they act badly on each other.

Household use

Spruce is widely used in the national economy. Its wood is used in large quantities, for example, for the manufacture of paper. Pulp, artificial silk and much more are produced from spruce wood; it is widely used in construction. Spruce wood is an indispensable material for the manufacture of some musical instruments (for example, the upper soundboards of violins are made from it, etc.).
Spruce is also an important supplier of tannins, which are essential for leather dressing. These substances in our country are obtained mainly from spruce bark. Our other plants are much less important as sources of tannins (the bark of oak, willow, larch, the rhizome of the herbaceous bergenia plant, etc. are used).

A bit of history

Spruce is not only a Christmas tree. It is constantly used when escorting a person to last way. Spruce branches are placed under the coffin, wreaths are made from spruce branches. This tree is both festive and mournful. Pine needle phytoncides disinfect the room, expel " evil spirit". It is believed that when the body is taken out with the help of spruce branches, all the bad things that sent a person on his last journey are removed from the house, spruce alleviates the suffering of his soul, which has not yet had time to completely part with the body - this will take 40 days. Spruce branches lying on the grave contribute to the relief of the soul of the deceased.
Sometimes healers and witches, reading conspiracies, as if to strengthen, enhance the action, burn a small branch of spruce in an iron bowl and see how the ashes are located, in what form - budding or not.

Photos and illustrations