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78 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland
PICEA O MORIKA, SERVIAN SPRUCE
ricea Omorika, Bolle, Monatschrift des Verei?ies zur Eeforderung des Gartenbaues, 1 24 (1877);
Masters, Card. CJiron. 1 884, xxi. 308, 309, Figs. 56, 57, 58, and 1897, *» 153, % 44 ; Jour.
Linn. Soc. (Bot.) xxii. 203 (1886); Willkomm, Forstliche Flora, 9 9 (1897); Kent, in VeitcKs
Man. Conifem, 4 42 (1900); Richardson, Edin. J3ot. Garden, Notes, No. i (1900); G. von
Beck, Die Vegetationsverhaltnisse der Illyrisclien Lander, 2 86, 360, 440, 474 (1901).
Pinus Omorika, Pancic, Eine Neue Conifere in den Oestlichen Alfen, 4 (Belgrade, 1876); Masters,
Card. Chro?i. 1 877, vii. 470, 620.
A tree with a tall, slender stem, said to attain 130 feet in height, with a girth of
stem of only 4 feet, with short branches, forming a narrow pyramidal crown. The
topmost branches are directed upwards, the middle ones are horizontally spreading,
and the lower ones are pendulous, with their tips arching upwards. Bark brownish
red, and scaling off in plates, the fragments often being heaped in quantity round the
base of the tree. The leaves on vertical shoots stand out on all sides, but on
horizontal shoots they point forwards on the upper side, being pseudo-distichous in
three or four ranks on the lower side. They are flattened, 4-angled, straight, or
curved to one side, f-i inch long, linear, acute or obtuse with an apiculus, convex,
and shining green on the ventral surface, marked with stomatic lines on each side
of the prominent midrib of the dorsal surface. 1 They persist for 4 or 5 years.
The buds, ovoid-conic with brown, membranous scales, the outermost of which
end in long subulate points, are produced chiefly near the end of the shoot; and in
unfolding, the uppermost scales are pushed off as a cap. The dark brown hairs,
which are conspicuous on the young shoots, persist on the older branchlets of even
3 or 4 years' growth in wild specimens.
The male flowers, which are partly solitary and partly whorled, are stalked, ovoid-
cylindric, bright red, \-\ inch long, and are surrounded at the base by numerous
membranous bracts.
Cones, shortly - stalked 2-2-*- inches long, bluish black when young, dark-
brown when ripe, clustered, the upper ones being directed upwards, while the
middle ones are horizontal, and the lower ones pendulous. Scales almost orbicular
in outline, broad and convex, streaked on the outer surface, with the margin
slightly bent inwards, undulate and denticulate. Bract obovate-cuneate, minute.
Seeds small, ^-\ inch long, obovate, blackish brown, with a wing 1 inch long, obovate
in outline.
1 On horizontal shoots, the leaves, by twisting movements on their bases, are inverted, so that the green surface is turned
upwards and the stomatic surface downwards.
Picea 79
DISTRIBUTION
The Servian spruce was first made known to science by Pan£ic, who discovered it
in south-western Servia, near the village of Zaovina, on ist August 1875. Its area is
a small one, occupying about 20 kilometres long by 15 kilometres wide on both sides
of the Drina valley, the boundary between Servia and Bosnia. Here it occurs on
limestone rocks at altitudes varying from 2700 to 5300 feet. It grows in small
groves in the wetter places in the ravines, but it does not there reach such a height
as it attains in the rockier parts of the mountains, where it forms part of the mixed
forest of Austrian and common pines, common spruce, beech, and sycamore. Pure
woods of Omorika occur at higher elevations, between 4700 and 5300 feet, where
sub-alpine plants accompany it. Wettstein gives the following as the composition
of the characteristic Omorika woods :
Dominant Trees. Picea Omorika, Pinus sylvestris, Carpiims duinensis,
Picea excelsa, Fagus sylvatica, Popiilus tremula, Abies pecttnata,
Ostrya carpinifolia, Salix sp., Pinus austriaca.
Underwood. Corylus avellana, Cotinus coggygria, Spirtza cana, with
Rhamnus fallax and Lonicera alpigena at high altitudes.
Ground-herbage. Aspidium Filix-mas, lobatum, and an^ilare.
Wettstein * says than an Omorika forest has a peculiar and gloomy aspect, the
slender stems with their short branches and columnar or spindle-shaped crowns
looking quite different from any other type of European forest. In mixed forests,
the straight single stems, arising out of the general mass of the other trees, are
equally peculiar.
Omorika seedlings and young trees are only found in exposed rocky situations,
and in the bottoms of wet shaded ravines. The tree in the wild state is strictly
confined to limestone soil, and never grows on the slate formation which is found in
parts of the Drina valley, yet when cultivated, it does very well, at least in youth, on
soils which are not calcareous.
The largest tree 2 recorded is one felled by Pancic, which measured 42.2 metres
in height, and 0.385 metres in diameter. It showed 137 rings, and the width
of the rings gradually diminished from 0.28 cm. in the 3rd decade to 0.04 cm. in
the 14th decade. Pancic says that the tree has an inclination to grow with a spiral
stem, and that it loses its branches up to about half its height, the largest of the
branches being only about 2 metres in length. The cones are borne, according to
him, upright on the topmost branches only, but elsewhere they hang down with their
tips directed slightly upwards.
Pancic, in his first account of the tree, reports that he had heard on good
authority of its occurrence in the mountains of Montenegro; it has since been
1 Silzmigsber. kais. Akad. d. Wiss., xcix. 503 ; Oesterr. Bot. Zeitschr. 1890, p. 357.
2 Letter of Pan£ic, quoted in Stein's article on "Omorika" in Gartenflora, 1887, p. 14.