Plantae > Tracheophyta > Pinopsida > Pinales > Pinaceae > Tsuga > Tsuga heterophylla

Tsuga heterophylla (Pacific hemlock; Western hemlock; Hemlock spruce; British Columbia hemlock)

Synonyms:
Language: Chi; Dut; Fre; Ger; Hrv, Srp; Hun; Ita; Nor; Rus

Wikipedia Abstract

Tsuga heterophylla, the western hemlock or western hemlock-spruce, is a species of hemlock native to the west coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, and its southeastern limit in northern Sonoma County, California.
View Wikipedia Record: Tsuga heterophylla

Attributes

Air Quality Improvement [1]  High
Allergen Potential [1]  Low
Carbon Capture [1]  Medium
Screening - Summer [2]  Dense
Screening - Winter [2]  Dense
Shade Percentage [1]  91 %
Temperature Reduction [1]  High
Wind Reduction [1]  High
Bloom Period [2]  Mid Spring
Drought Tolerance [2]  Low
Edible [3]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Fire Tolerance [2]  Low
Flower Type [3]  Monoecious
Frost Free Days [2]  5 months
Fruit/Seed Abundance [2]  Medium
Fruit/Seed Begin [2]  Summer
Fruit/Seed End [2]  Fall
Growth Form [2]  Single Stem
Growth Period [2]  Spring, Summer
Growth Rate [2]  Slow
Janka Hardness [4]  540 lbf (245 kgf) Very Soft
Leaf Type [3]  Evergreen
Lifespan [5]  Perennial
Pollinators [3]  Wind
Propagation [2]  Bare Root, Container, Cutting, Seed
Root Depth [2]  36 inches (91 cm)
Seed Spread Rate [2]  Moderate
Seed Vigor [2]  Low
Seeds Per [2]  297599 / lb (656095 / kg)
Shape/Orientation [2]  Conical
Specific Gravity [7]  0.45
Structure [3]  Tree
Usage [3]  Yields a resin similar to Abies balsamea, it is gathered by incisions in the trunk or by boiling the wood; The bark contains 8 - 18% tannin and is a major source of tannin in America; A reddish-brown dye is obtained from the bark; A decoction of the bark has been used to clean rust off iron and steel; A pitch (called hemlock pitch), is obtained by distillation of the young branches; The pitch is rubbed on the hair to get rid of head lice; Tolerant of light trimming, plants can be grown as a hedge; This species makes a good hedge in Britain; Wood - light, hard, tough, easy to work. Commercially superior to other members of this genus, it is an important tree for construction, the outside of buildings etc and for carving into spoons etc; It is also a major source of pulp; The wood makes a slow-burning fuel and so can be used to bank up a fire to keep it burning overnight;
Vegetative Spread Rate [2]  Slow
Height [3]  230 feet (70 m)
Width [3]  49 feet (15 m)
Hardiness Zone Minimum [1]  USDA Zone: 6 Low Temperature: -10 F° (-23.3 C°) → 0 F° (-17.8 C°)
Hardiness Zone Maximum [1]  USDA Zone: 7 Low Temperature: 0 F° (-17.8 C°) → 10 F° (-12.2 C°)
Light Preference [6]  Mixed Sun/Shade
Soil Acidity [6]  Mostly Acid
Soil Fertility [6]  Mostly Infertile
Soil Moisture [6]  Moist
Water Use [1]  Moderate
Foliage Color [2]  Green
Fruit Color [2]  Brown
View Plants For A Future Record : Tsuga heterophylla

Protected Areas

Emblem of

Washington

Predators

Range Map

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1i-Tree Species v. 4.0, developed by the USDA Forest Service's Northern Research Station and SUNY-ESF using the Horticopia, Inc. plant database.
♦ 2USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 3Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 4Wood Janka Hardness Scale/Chart J W Morlan's Unique Wood Gifts
♦ 5PLANTATT - Attributes of British and Irish Plants: Status, Size, Life History, Geography and Habitats, M. O. Hill, C. D. Preston & D. B. Roy, Biological Records Centre, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (2004)
♦ 6ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 7Forest Inventory and Analysis DB version 5.1, May 4, 2013, U.S. Forest Service
♦ 8Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 9HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 10Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 11Aplodontia rufa, Leslie N. Carraway and B. J. Verts, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 431, pp. 1-10 (1993)
♦ 12FOOD HABITS IN RELATION TO THE ECOLOGY AND POPULATION DYNAMICS OF BLUE GROUSE, RICHARD DENNIS KING, Masters Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1964
♦ 13Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 14New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
♦ 15Tamiasciurus douglasii, Michael A. Steele, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 630, pp. 1-8 (1999)
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0