Beauties of Norway Spruces

     All species of coniferous trees are handsome, including the majestic Norway spruces which are native to Europe, but planted abundantly on lawns in North America, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  There they add much beauty, in themselves and the animals that live among them, through the year.     
     Norway spruces grow tall and stately with dark-green needles on twigs that hang from the main limbs.  Those long branches sweep out, down and up again at the tips, taking the shape of bows.
     There are a few beauties on these spruces in May.  New, light-green needles grow on the tips of the twigs at that time, and contrast beautifully with the deep-green, older needles.  At this time, too, red, inch-long female flowers, which are the shape of cones, droop from branches and contrast with the five-inch-long, beige cones from last year that hang from older limbs.
     Older Norway spruces are magnificent in winter when they are most obvious because deciduous trees lose their leaves in autumn.  The spruces offer a deep-green contrast to the gray of deciduous trees on lawns in winter.  They are lovely on sunny days against a backdrop of blue skies and white and gray, cumulus clouds.  And those spruces are also beautiful when snow piles on them and traces every limb and drooping twig. 
     Norway spruces are tough and resistant to wind, the weight of ice and snow and disease.  While white pine branches break off in heavy wind or frozen precipitation, and eastern hemlock trees are succumbing to wooly adelgid aphids, Norway spruces do well on the lawns they were planted on. 
     This kind of spruce tree has beauties in the birds that seek cover among them.  Red-tailed and Cooper's hawks, great horned owls, mourning doves, purple grackles and American crows are some bird species that nest in them.  The hawks, owls and crows also shelter in them in winter, the owls during the day and the others at night.  Dark-eyed juncos, pine siskins and long-eared owls, all of which breed farther north, shelter in groves of lawn spruces in winter as well, the owls by day and the little birds through the night.  The needles and snow piled on them are like blankets, sheltering those birds from cold, winter winds.
     Gray squirrels also build leafy homes in their needled boughs, where they might raise young.  Those squirrels, and red squirrels, eastern chipmunks and other rodents eat many of the seeds in the spruce's cones.            
     A variety of small birds eat seeds from Norway spruce cones as well, particularly in winter.  Some of those species are permanent resident Carolina chickadees and American goldfinches, and wintering black-capped chickadees, pine siskins, white-winged crossbills and red cross-bills.  The siskins and crossbills are not in this part of Pennsylvania every winter, however.  Crossbills have especially crossed beaks that they inherited to pry open the scales of the cones so their broad, sticky tongues can pull each seed out from under each scale.
     Look at Norway spruces more closely anytime of year.  They have many beauties and intrigues, in themselves and the animals that live among them.