Native to the mountain forests of central and northern Europe, Picea abies has been cultivated in North America long enough to feel familiar, though it remains emphatically a northern plant. Its name comes from the Latin pix — pitch — a reference to the resinous bark that distinguishes the genus, and the tree lives up to that etymology with a sticky, aromatic bark that flakes in shallow plates as it ages. In youth it stands neatly conical with upswept branches; given a few decades, those branches arch and their tips hang in long pendulous curtains that are immediately recognizable. The one-inch needles are four-sided and saber-like, arranged in tidy rows along each branch.

At 40 to 60 feet at maturity, this is a tree that needs space and a cool climate to flourish. It performs well through zone 7 only in the mountains; in the humid, hot summers of the piedmont and coastal plain it struggles. The pendulous cones — 4 to 6 inches of silvery-brown scales — are some of the largest produced by any spruce, and they attract small mammals. Plant it as a windbreak, a screen, or a woodland anchor in a northern garden, and give it moderately moist, well-drained, acidic soil with full sun.