Picea abies (L.) H. Karst., Norway Spruce
Account Summary
Introduced, neophyte, usually or always deliberately planted, occasional, but ignored and therefore seriously under-recorded.
1975; Faulkner, Dr J.S.; Marble Arch/Cladagh River Glen NR.
April to August.
Norway Spruce, the very familiar Christmas tree, is not much planted today as it was formerly in NI, being very much overtaken as a timber tree by Picea sitchensis (Sitka Spruce). This is particularly the case on poorer, wet and more exposed upland soils. It is also unsuited to dry conditions or deep peat. Having said that, it is still not as frequently recorded in Fermanagh as it probably should be since farmers carrying out shelter-belt or private forestry plantation often plant surplus trees into their hedges. It seeds freely and can colonise open, disturbed ground and adjacent heath or moorland, provided grazing animals allow its survival (Stace 1997).
In Fermanagh, we have records of it from just eleven tetrads, mainly around the Upper Lough Erne basin and, as the distribution map shows, scattered very thinly elsewhere. It has been recorded in Fermanagh on lakeshore and riverside woods, plus along roadside hedgerows, but botanical recorders are often unfamiliar with exotic conifers and tend to ignore the trees, considering them obviously planted and of negligible conservation interest. Norway Spruce is not a long-lived species and very often specimens in the wild are stunted and horribly deformed by poor growing conditions.
One of the most interesting things about P. abies is its rather peculiar natural distribution. It is a widespread Eurasian boreal-montane species, yet with the exception of a tiny outlier on the Harz Mountains in N Germany it is entirely absent from SW Europe (Jalas & Suominen 1973, Map 157). This distribution makes it clear that it could not and did not migrate back into the British Isles after the last Ice Age, although fossil evidence proves it had done so in previous warm Interglacial periods (Mitchell 1996; M.E. Braithwaite in: Preston et al. 2002).
Fermanagh Occurence

Names
'Picea’ is the classical Latin name of the genus and is derived from the Latin 'pix' meaning 'pitch', a reference to the resin obtained from the tree. The specific epithet 'abies' is derived from the Latin 'abire' meaning 'to rise', which is considered a reference to the considerable height some species of coniferous trees can attain under good growing conditions (Hyam and Pankhurst 1995).
Threats
None.