How old does a spruce live and how to determine its age?

Any tree, be it deciduous, coniferous or fern-like, is limited to a specific life span. Some trees grow, age and die in decades, others have a long life span. For example, sea buckthorn has a lifespan of up to 30 years, a quince tree - up to 50, rare specimens will live up to 60. A baobab or sequoia can live for thousands of years - these are recognized long-livers.

Spruce is represented by 120 species. European and Russian spruce, available in the temperate forests of our continent, is a common species. But in the Asian part of Russia Siberian spruce is found, in the Caucasus mountains - the eastern one. American spruce is called black. Chinese - rough, one of the most prickly. Different species begin to produce cones with seeds between the ages of 10 and 70. This is already an adult spruce.

The tree that often pleases children on New Years can live up to 300 years. And this is provided that it is not cut down ahead of time. Enterprising local and federal officials are supporting healthy advocacy for forest conservation, and trees are being planted in squares that can be decorated and hung with garlands for the holidays without cutting them down - they grow in one of the flower beds.

The black spruce, common in the United States, can live a little longer - up to 350 years. It is easy to recognize by the cones, which at a young age have a black-purple hue, and when the seeds ripen, they are black-crimson. Sitka spruce can live as long as European or Siberian spruce - 3 centuries.

Norwegian (Scandinavian) spruce also lives 300-350 years, its height is about 15-30 m. Red spruce, growing in Canada, New England and Scotland, can live up to 400 years - about the same as black. It has reddish brown buds. The Japanese spruce has a maximum age of up to 500 years. It is by right a long-liver among all widespread species, the most prickly of all spruces. Its range is the Pacific islands of volcanic origin.

In the province of Dolarna in Sweden, a specimen of European spruce lives, the age of which, according to scientists, is close to 10,000 years, in particular, it has exceeded 9550.

The fact is that all spruce trees are capable of multiplying not only by seeds from cones, but also by layering.

It is possible to accurately determine by the diameter of the trunk how old a particular tree is, only by cutting it down and counting the number of annual rings. Estimating the age from the actual diameter of the trunk is not entirely accurate. The fact is that the growth rings of a particular tree can be of different thicknesses. Depending on how fertile the soil was, where the tree grew, and how frequent and prolonged the rains were, in different years the thickness of one ring can vary 2 or more times.

Narrow growth rings are a sign of poor nutrition, frequent drought and unnecessarily cramped growing conditions. The rainy seasons due to weather anomalies and climate change may differ in recent years.Rings that are wide and narrow in thickness are often arranged in random order.

The second way is in the number of divergences of several branches on the tree trunk. Plants of the spruce genus have a whorled arrangement of branches - 3 or more branches converge at one point of the trunk. Add 4 to the number of whorls. The resulting value is considered to be the conditional age of the spruce, but the correction is also made for the height of the trunk.

Any species growing in urban conditions, where the ecology is much worse than in the forest, lives much less - not 250-500 years, but 100-150. There are several reasons for this.

• Most conifers do not tolerate the scorching heat of summer. - their branches and needles dry out prematurely. With the onset of a colder pore, the plant grows young shoots every 1.5-2 years. In hot summer conditions, it is necessary to ensure abundant and timely watering of trees, especially when there are no long rains and several weeks in a row are not expected.

• Spruce itself was created by nature for shady places. In direct sunlight, it can also live for centuries - but this is typical only in a spruce forest, and even then not for all species. In a mixed forest, Christmas trees form a second tier, growing under the crowns of deciduous trees. In the taiga, this is possible when the forest is predominantly pine. Also, plants survive at the expense of each other - there is plenty of shade in the spruce forest.

• Gas-polluted air, presence of buildings and congested motorways reduce the life of spruce trees up to several times. It is more correct to organize a man-made spruce forest in a city park by planting a spruce under the crowns of poplars, plane trees and other deciduous species, which, unlike conifers, require a lot of direct sunlight. In a park, like in a forest, the air is much cleaner than on a busy freeway. In the alley of the city avenue or on the sidewalks of the streets, it is advisable to plant this tree not singly, but in rows or groups.

• In winter, roads are often sprinkled with salt and filled with reagents.so that people and cars do not slide on ice. In such conditions, the tree quickly degrades and dies from the salinity of the soil in which it grows.

• When growing spruce trees in nurseries for sale, plant them in groups - from several dozen in each. If you plant a spruce too scattered, it will not live long, and its quality will be far from the original, inherent in specimens grown in the forest.

Under natural conditions, in many species of spruce, after the first 15 years of life, the main root begins to die off. Because of this spruce does not tolerate a hurricane - especially when it grows in open areas... Also, drought is detrimental to the old plant - the near-surface layers of the soil, in which it has managed to take root well, lose moisture, and the tree has practically no place to replenish its supply, if the lateral roots have not grown deep enough.

Spruce is adapted by nature to grow under the cover of higher trees of different types, species and varieties. A windbreak in spruce forests is a frequent occurrence.

Spruce is not ignored as a type of tree for landscaping cities and towns. In spruce and pine forests, the air is practically sterile - no more than 300 non-pathogenic microbes and spores per cubic meter of air. For comparison, in operating rooms of hospitals and clinics, no more than 1,500 microbes per cubic meter are allowed. Spruce not only refreshes the air with volatile coniferous substances that fight all microbes and viruses, but also produces oxygen no less than its deciduous counterparts. The air in the taiga, where there are a lot of pines and firs, is healing for humans.

How to determine the age of a tree, see below.