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Botanical Name: Picea pungens (Glauca Group)
Common Name: Colorado Blue Spruce
Origin: Western USA
Location: CNE, CNW, CSE, CSW
Notable Feature: Spruces assigned to the Glauca Group have attractive, silvery blue green needles.
Habit: Stiff, formal evergreen tree, 30 to 60 feet tall with a 10 to 20-foot spread; densely narrow to broadly pyramidal with horizontal branching to the ground.
Flower: Ornamentally inconspicuous, concentrated in the upper one-third of mature trees. Monoecious (male and female flowers are borne on separate trees); male flowers orange and in the leaf axils, and female flowers green or pink-purple and borne at the end of the branchlets.
Fruit: Oblong cones 2 to 4 inches long; green when young, yellow-brown when ripe. Borne in the upper canopy of the tree.
Foliage: Needled, evergreen, blue-green, and ¾ to 1 ¼ inches long. The prickly needles are four-sided and radiate straight out from around the stem, more heavily above and less densely below.
Interesting Fact: Glauca Group is a large, catch-all grouping of foliage variants that are blue, bluish green, or silvery blue in color. Prized for their color in the landscape which can be attributed to a thicker than normal waxy coating on their “true-green” needles. These coated needles refract sunlight and reflect it back to the human eye in a blue wavelength.