Picea torano

(Siebold ex K.Koch) Koehne 1893

Common names

Hari-momi, bara-momi torano-momi [Japanese] (Iwatsuki et al. 1995), tiger-tail spruce (named for the long, drooping shoots of old trees, and the sharpness of their needles), Tigerschwanz-Fichte [German].

Taxonomic notes

Syn: Abies torano Siebold ex K.Koch 1873, Pinus torano (Siebold ex K.Koch) Voss 1907, Abies polita Siebold et Zucc. 1842 nom. illeg., Pinus polita (Siebold et Zucc.) Antoine 1846, Picea polita (Siebold et Zucc.) Carrière 1855 (Farjon 1998). The name Picea polita is more common than Picea torano, being the norm in most published floras and most horticultural texts.

Description

Monoecious, evergreen tree to 30 m tall and 100 cm dbh. Bark grey-brown, deeply fissured and peeling off in scales. Branchlets stout, brown, glabrous, deeply grooved; pulvini stout, 0.6-0.7 mm long. Leaves stiff, hard, sharp-pointed (some consider them the sharpest among all the spruces), linear, quadrangular, ridged, 15-20 mm long, ca. 2.5 mm across, deep green, with a stomatal band on each side; resin canals two, marginal. Flowers May to June, 1-3 near apex of previous year's short shoots. Pollen cones cylindric, red-purple, with numerous microsporophylls. Seed cones pendant, ovate-oblong, green maturing (in October) brown, 7-10 cm long, 4-4.5 cm across. Cone scales persistent, widely obovate, thinly woody, 17-23 mm long, 14-18 mm wide, irregularly denticulate on upper margin; bract scales very small, inconspicuous. Seeds black-brown, obovate, ca. 6 mm long, 3 mm wide; wings brown, obovate ca. 13 mm long, 7 mm wide (Iwatsuki et al. 1995).

Range

Japan: Pacific Ocean side of C Honshu (westward from Fukushima Prefecture), Shikoku and Kyushu, in the mountains at elevations of (400-)600-1700(-1850) m on volcanic soils (Farjon 1990, Iwatsuki et al. 1995).

The climate is moist-maritime, with annual precipitation of over 1,000 mm and cold, snowy winters. Occasionally forms pure stands but more often occurs in mixed stands with species such as Abies homolepis, Larix kaempferi, Pinus densiflora, Betula, Acer, Fagus, Quercus, Prunus, and Zelkova serrata (Farjon 1990).

Big tree

Oldest

Dendrochronology

Ethnobotany

Observations

Lake Yamanaka at the base of Fuji-San is often mentioned for its remarkable pure forest of Picea torano (Wilson 1916, Farjon 1990).

Remarks

Citations

See also

Farjon 1990.