I get that, hug. I do however think your situation to not be that of most NS planted in N. America. Not the bit about cutting into a woods or plantation yielding greater wind pressure for the remainder of the stand. That does of course occur, and has nothing intrinsically to do with this species, but is a more general concern. I guess what I'm talking about is more the "amenity tree" (gee I hate that term) in the landscape somewhere, or even a windbreak of NS, of which there are so many here in the US. In those situations is where I've literally never seen one come down, whether via breakage, or by the roots. Not a one time.

+oM

The former summer home of Sir Henry Pellat north of Toronto (Canada) has an avenue of now 95 year old Norway spruce lining the long driveway through open fields. Of the 50+ trees grown on sandy loam soils, at least 10 have windthrown over the past 30 years...a few of them are still very much alive (but horizontal).

An interesting observation and quite the opposite in many parts of Maine. Here spruces, Norway, blue, white and others are among the trees most prone to being blown over in storms. This may be attributable to two factors. First, many spruces grow in shallow soil over granite ledge. Their roots roam widely but not deeply. Especially when the soil is saturated, the entire root mass is tipped out of the ground quite easily. Second, and this is especially true of blue spruce, many are planted as single specimens. Once they reach a certain size the lack of any other trees to break the force of the wind will, as huggorm observed, lead to their falling. My neighbor just up the street has a Norway spruce of at least 75 feet in her backyard quite close to her house. Always a concern when the winds begin to howl.

I may have been overbroad in dialing this one up. So, really talking about fairly open-grown plants, which have had their whole lifetime to react to the wind and develop the various types of wood tissue which are in response to that. Those are the ones I've never seen tip. As are all conifers (pretty much) NS is shallow-rooted even in the best sandy loam. It just strikes me that despite this, I don't see a lot of windthrow, as in never! But this is what IK'm looking for....other observations. I don't need to have my view validated, lol! Keep em coming, fellows.

+oM

So, really talking about fairly open-grown plants, which have had their
whole lifetime to react to the wind and develop the various types of
wood tissue which are in response to that. Those are the ones I've
never seen tip.

Agree on that, but on the other hand I don't see other trees growing under that kind of conditions tip over either. But, NS growing in decent soil with lots of ground water will grow really quick and get weak wooded. I see them lose their tops pretty often. About one spruce out of three I cut down has damaged tops. That doesn't mean that much though, it's normally so high up that you can get two nice 20' logs anyway.

This topic does remind me of this video from New Zealand though, even if I'm not sure what kind of spruce or fir it is

Yeah, true enough. Those Colorado spruce in the cemeteries were among lots of other trees, but a ground layer of mostly turf and tombstones. The Norways right in there amongst them stood up to it just fine-same set of conditions really. Hmm..

+oM

I've related my tail of woe before. My parents are on the coast, and after the developer-planted Black Pine windreaks were taken out by turpentine beetles, we started losing a tree or two every other hurricane. There were...five? Norway Spruce. All mature specimens growing in sand without granite ledges. One healthy seeming Norway Spruce died in Hurricane Irene. I think it was the salt spray that took it out, though. It was close to a driveway on one side. All the others are still there. I can't remember any ever dropping branches, although one seems to be missing a large branch.

They definitely do better in storms then the maples. More or less on a par with the basswood. Not as good as the Eastern Red Cedar.

Didn't see that video. Awesome! There's no doubt an essentially lone conifer, plenty tall, out in the raging rain and wind, and perched on a side slope, can easily succumb. But come to think of it, most of the NS....or maybe roughy 50% of the time, they are planted in twos, threes, maybe little rows of five or six. So they may be helping each other remain vertical. I'm talking very large, fairly old trees. Those things, like in many a Wisconsin town, but planted perhaps more than one hundred years ago at this point, never come down in the wind, or snow/ice for that matter. In the latter case, I have seen a branch snap a few times. But even there, that's about it.

Most storms over here occur from late fall until the cold winter weather arrives. At that time most trees have lost their leaves, but spruces still have all their wind catching needles on. That, combined with a wet soil is why they are more prone to fall. Even worse when the storm comes from east or north, when the wind normally comes from south and west. We had a small storm in june this year, wich is pretty uncommon that time of year. All I lost that time was a huge aspen tree and no spruces at all. I'm sure that's because the aspen tree had its leaves on.

We've experienced Norways falling in all of our major storms over the past 7 years (there have been three severe events). Through our local area there have been two instances of 70 mph wind that came on suddenly and many of the older Norway Spruce windbreaks snapped in half. Granted these were huge spruces which were no longer dense enough to be an actual windbreak. Smaller Norways and up to intermediate size (30-40' tall) received little to no damage.

Then two years ago an area 20 miles south of us received 10" of rainfall in 2 days and then 60 mph winds. My father-in-law had 15 mature Norways that were massive trees. All but 3 of them toppled. The ground was sopping wet and in this particular event many trees, both deciduous and evergreen, fell over with their entire root ball. You should have seen the root ball of those Norways! I would have never believed they would be so large! He has a picture of it somewhere- I'll see if he can find it.

Iowa is a tough environment. The wind coming over the farm fields can be ridiculous. Occasionally it is windy all year long. We do work for one farmer who has an incredible windbreak- it must be a half mile long with several layers (blue, Norway, black hills) and it is truly a site to behold. He had no damage in those events, my guess being that the layering effect protected the trees.

I do like Norways, but there comes a point when a windbreak no longer breaks the wind. More than likely these were Norways that were planted when the farms began (100 years old or more for many of them). There are tons of them around here. At that point I recommend taking down some of the trees each year and starting a new windbreak in front or behind the existing one if room allows. The more layers the better.

I see many cemeteries where the oldest, least damaged trees are Norways and oaks. Norways there are more durable than white pines, tuliptrees, maples and many others.

a range of responses here, I see. Good stuff. Yes, Select, I see your area as even windier than here, though if we get a good NE'erly fetch off the big lake, it can be nuts. But the big W winds following storm systems are likely even more extreme by you than here. Beng, that's exactly what I'm talking about-old, obviously legacy trees still standing long after numerous other types have been pounded to pieces. I can accept that in certain situations, NS will succumb but I still think of it as having extraordinary resilience in the landscape.

It will be interesting to see how all my plantation ones do up north. They will have their buddies around them to modify the winds, but across the road from us, which happens to be to the N, is all farm field. some pretty ridiculous winds can come sweeping in off that field. Still, we're at right around 9000 trees planted at this point-NS, white and red pines, hybrid larch, and a smattering of others, so none of these trees will really be standing alone. To the south is our woods, which is actually but a part of a much larger chunk of wooded land.

Incidentally-and this relates to what huggorm reports-the next property to our W is a continuation of that low, swampy woods. There is an area where a darn-near tornado or at the very least, a microburst wind must have came in from the north. White cedar, big white pine, and others are toppled like a pile of tinker toys. And sadly, it is easy to see how now that this has happened, subsequent wind events are continuing to push more trees over. It's kind of cool in a way, as regeneration is already well advanced-lots of pine and "cedar" coming up right in the midst of this mess. If this were aboriginal conditions, none of this would make the slightest bit of difference in the long run. but now, with the farm field to the N, new damage can continue to occur, and that is what it is doing.

+oM

I can't say I've ever seen a wind thrown Norway Spruce. They're naturalized in this region and very plentiful. While I don't share Tom's appreciation for their beauty and dignity (I'll take Tsuga), they are a very durable tree. On the other hand, it is common to see Blue Spruce toppled by winds. If the ground is saturated, it may only take winds around 50mph to knock over an open grown 20'-30' Blue Spruce.

Hey, I'm a Tsugaphile from way back! I've learned it is possible to appreciate more than one tree type, lol!

Maack, even though a great deal of my work life involves "native restoration" and related domains, I'm no purist. In fact, finding naturalized NS is one of the things that get me excited, lol. I've only ever really seen this happen much up in our state's north-central/northwestern areas, specifically, right exactly where our dear governor and his cohorts wanted the largest open-pit iron ore mine in the world to be built-the Hurley/Copper Falls area. There's some big old ones in the woods right along highway 70 (I think) up there. Haven't been there in a while, but that's a deep woods environment up there, and with all the lake effect snow they get, quite a good region for tree growth. Where have you seen this occur?

+om

How large do they grow in Wisconsin? If they grow to 150 ft, will they be the tallest conifer growing there?

I know Norway Spruce are typically the tallest trees in suburban southeast Massachusetts. In rural areas to the north you have some pretty big white pine, but in my parent's neighborhood the Norway Spruce dwarf the pines and oaks.

Hug, I'm thinking 100 ft. is likely right around the top end for height here, perhaps a few may extend beyond that. That whole area-of what is the tallest-growing conifer in this region- is badly muddled by history and happenstance. Evidently, in the original Wisconsin and Upper Michigan "pineries", there were indeed white pine of 200 ft. height. But with the fragmentation of the forests around here these days, perhaps climate disruption, and for certain, the impatience of man, we will likely never see that again. True enough, the northern part of our state is nearly all forest, but so many factors today conspire against tree species reaching their genetic potential. I'd love to be wrong about all of this, but I doubt I am. Further, a new wave of extremely short-sighted politician has taken roost here, and if something that will be worth a million dollars some day can make somebody ten dollars today, they'll reach for the ten every time. That is the fact of the matter.

+oM

Exactly the same thing here, normally not over 100 ft. these days but there are records of larger trees some 200 years ago.

Tallest known Norway spruce in Maine is 116 feet. Red spruce 87'. Blue spruce 100'. Black spruce 66'. Eastern white pine 125'. There are a fairly large number of isolated stands of white pine with many trees over 100'. Some of these (allegedly) still bear the faint axe marks indicating a "King's pine" reserved for the royal navy in 17th and 18th centuries.

Growing up there was a "grove" of planted N spruces nearby & they were the tallest trees I'd seen as a kid. Tallest in the center of the small grove (7-8 trees) was about 125' tall -- all were at least 110'.

Actually I have an old Kodak pic of that grove -- might try to find it & take a digital pic of it -- don't have a scanner.

I have to append this -- the grove of English elms at my home had a taller tree -- about 130'. These were killed by DED & cut down around 1973 or so. I've also got an old Kodak pic of one of these.

Awesome beng. I also grew up climbing a row of very large old NS. Had been planted many years earlier as a windbreak when that was all farm Then much later, my grandmother lived in a big old house which yard was bordered by this row. We'd climb to the very tips, hook our red hoodies up to the branches, climb down, run home, which was not even a block away, and look at our stuff up in the trees! One family of rough boys nearby, I remember they'd go up maybe a quarter of the way, shimmy out onto the end of a branch, and kind of bounce down to the ground! That line is still there mostly. One or two or three were cut down over the years-it actually extends a present-day two city blocks-but none have ever suffered any appreciable storm damage. I also remember my dad, uncles, grandpa and everybody used to always look up at a giant witches broom at the near-top of one of them. Of course, I was like a 6-yr. old kid or something. None of them knew what it was, and neither did I! Broom hunters, I'm pretty sure that broom is still up there too, lol.

+oM

Hi all... I have a 35 ft Norway pine that came down in severe thunderstorm last night in my backyard in Minneapolis. I know very little about these trees so I will ask a dumb question. An 18 ft black hills spruce costs about a thousand bucks to have it scooped out using a 99" Dia spade, I had to replace 7 when a tornado vortex came out of the sky to about 30 ft off the ground in my backyard, took down the trees. Is it possible to upright the tree and use ropes to hold it in place expecting it to re-root and live?

It depends on how much of the root system was torn off. I've re-righted knocked-over trees successfully before, and they did require ropes/wires for quite a few years to re-establish. But I've never done a 35 footer, and not sure how you can re-right it. I did one with a rope tied to the upper part of the laid-down tree and tied to my car bumper & pulled it up that way.

Start a new post and include pix.

tj