From Spruce Ledge, as it is locally known, one can look southwest down the Mehoopany Creek watershed and see strait to Red Rock on a clear day. This vista is on Bartlett Mountain (on the southwest corner of Flat Top) and can be accessed via the notorious incline of the White Brook drainage on State Game Lands 57.

On a recent hike here I took the time to take a sampling of a branch tip from thick stand of spruces for which the place is named. As I admitted after being asked exactly what type of spruce these trees were, “I’m not good with spruces.”

I typically refer to the classic Peterson Field Guides: Trees and Shrubs by George A. Petrides for many of my identification endeavors. But I also have several other ID guides and encyclopedias that help me with supplemental information that Petrides doesn’t include by authors including Michael A. Dirr, Michael D. Willliams, Stan Takiela; and Kirshner, Mathews, Nelson and Spellenberg. So I also pull clues from those texts as well.

Picea rubens is a hardy mountain lover. It’s needles are small, 0.5″ or so and curved upwards. Different sources offer differing needle lengths within 1/8″. But this specific, upward curving of the needles is a great ID characteristic of Red Spruce. The needles in cross section are four sided, and sharp/pointy. Cones are around 1.5″ long and have smooth scale edges. The Red Spruce cone is also another great ID feature when cones are present, as you can see in the picture I’ve provided from Spruce Ledge. The twigs are hairy, although you may need a magnifying lens to observe this. This is a good ID trait as well, a trait shared only with its close relative, the Black Spruce.

The Field Guide to Trees of North America (National Wildlife Federation) notes that the Red Spruce can be “dwarfed or shrubby at high elevations.” This is a very interesting trait because at Spruce Ledge most of the spruces are not taller than 30-35′, nowhere near their potential height of 50-70′. Still, they are growing in full sunlight and in close competition with one another. Here we see just how much of a role microclimate can play in mature size. The spruces are mature enough to be producing heavy cone crops, which Takeila notes in his field guide that Red Spruce don’t do until 20-30 years of maturity. The spruce pictured above is no taller than 5′ in height, yet it’s producing cones, and is also growing in full sun with plenty of competition. Size, then, here at spruce ledge, can be a misleading indication of tree age, especially when trees are growing in a challenging microclimate. This, in turn, can also slight the identification process a little, when you might expect a mature tree with cones to be quite larger than five or six feet at thirty years old. Trees are simply a product of their environment.

So the small stature of these trees is a great example of a harsh, exposed highland microenvironment at work, just as the texts suggest, right?. The vicious high winds ripping up the Windy Valley below keep these spruces small in stature, creating a beautiful alpine setting on the rocky rim of Forkston at this wonderful vista.

But maybe the small trees have more of a story to tell than just being subject to a tough environment.

Several resources note that Red Spruce often hybridizes with its cousin the Black Spruce. Black Spruce have a much smaller mature height in the 25-30′ range, and Petrides also notes that they grow in low, ‘mat-like’ forms when exposed to harsh elements, maturing very slowly of upwards to 200 years. And with this information, I wonder if the small overall size of the spruces at spruce ledge isn’t a result of some natural hybridization between the Red and the Black spruce species. Are these little spruces ancients? Though unlikely, because Black Spruce are known to be growing in moist, poorly drained soils, certainly not like the sandstone conglomerate rock of spruce ledge.

I tend to lean towards these trees really being dwarfed more because of the elements they are exposed to versus the idea that maybe there is some hybridization at work. Maybe there is a population of Black Spruce too, further back in the swampy, moist soil of Flat Top that have been lending their genes to these Red spruces on the rocky outcroppings further out on the rocky landscape. Who knows for how long. It is quite possible, although it’s just my imagination at work for now.

I will admit it was hard standing out on that ledge as the temperature hovered somewhere around 8 or 9 degrees. Even though the sun was shining and I shared great company, I struggled to eat my peanut butter sandwich, my face was numb, and my bones were chilled. It took a lot of energy just to be there.

Of course, the view was spectacular, but it often comes with a price.