Picea abies (Linnaeus, 1753) - Norway spruce (Dawes Arboretum, Licking County, Ohio, USA)

Plants are multicellular, photosynthesizing eucaryotes. Most species occupy terrestrial environments, but they also occur in freshwater and saltwater aquatic environments. The oldest known land plants in the fossil record are Ordovician to Silurian. Land plant body fossils are known in Silurian sedimentary rocks - they are small and simple plants (e.g., Cooksonia). Fossil root traces in paleosol horizons are known in the Ordovician. During the Devonian, the first trees and forests appeared. Earth's initial forestation event occurred during the Middle to Late Paleozoic. Earth's continents have been partly to mostly covered with forests ever since the Late Devonian. Occasional mass extinction events temporarily removed much of Earth's plant ecosystems - this occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary (251 million years ago) and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 million years ago).

The most conspicuous group of living plants is the angiosperms, the flowering plants. They first unambiguously appeared in the fossil record during the Cretaceous. They quickly dominated Earth's terrestrial ecosystems, and have dominated ever since. This domination was due to the evolutionary success of flowers, which are structures that greatly aid angiosperm reproduction.

The tree shown here is Picea abies, the Norway spruce. Spruces are not angiosperms - they are conifers. The wild, natural variety of this tree is native to Scandinavia, western Russia, and parts of mainland Europe. The Norway spruce variety shown above is man-made (a cultivar). It is a "drooping" or "weeping" variety with pendulous branches. The drooping Norway spruce goes by the odd, quasi-taxonomic name Picea abies 'inversa'.

From arboretum signage:

These picturesque weeping trees represent one of the many cultivars of the commonly planted Norway spruce. They do best in full sun with moist, well-drained soil and are generally easy to grow. However, some staking and training of this cultivar is necessary to achieve the effect of these particular trees. Weeping evergreens, such as these, add contrast and focal points to the landscape.

Classification: Plantae, Pinophyta, Pinopsida, Pinales, Pinaceae

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