Geez Sal, that's along way down, from Larix to Salix! JK!

That style of branching is common and not unique enough to be an identifying feature.

Common?! I've never seen anything like it before. I do remember seeing that picture on the forums, however.

Mike

Yeah, I feel like I've seen 100s of spruces but never one like this. I would definitely pay to get a graft of this.

Salicaceae, thanks! I hope it does turn out to be that tree. Beaver Falls sure _sounds_ like western PA (and you are originally from NE Ohio right?) so it probably precludes me taking a drive to go see it.

larixmtn? The does sort of ring a bell. All I remember is the gallery was at some erstwhile picture hosting site and had various pictures of conifers. The funny or terrible thing is, the only user IDs from olden times that have absolutely burned into my mind are the people who I got into huge arguments with. Like "grayneedles", long since departed these forums, who insisted redwoods needed foggy cool weather year-round, and zone 9 winters. Or 'floralmakros' who basically accused someone of wrecking environmental havoc by daring to try an experimental pine in their not-matching-the-native-conditions climate, and then got into various utterly futile arguments with me.

Btw I should clarify I didn't actually see this picture posted on gardenweb, although it quite possibly was posted in some thread way back when. I found it in an archive.org backup of some site someone here had once posted a link to. Not geocities, that's too far in the past, but one of those generic companies where people used to create tiny websites, like tripod. Maybe photobucket? I think ages ago their website was less cluttered with ads and annoying javascript garbage. I doubt archive.org even bothers to crawl it anymore. I feel like there was another one that's vanished: photostream.com maybe?

Wish I had a camera at the time, but there were some very big & unusual-looking Norway spruces in Waynesboro, PA I saw this past autumn. There's another unusual one in Barrelville, MD which I'll try to get a pic of sometime.

David, Webshots?

Mike

Really a neat looking specimen that I've never seen anything like here in Midwest.

Mike...yes it could be that one. There were several of those that were common in the mid to late 2000s that you don't really see anymore, but I can't remember all of them.

I think i found the tree on Google maps. I will try to send a screenshot. It looks similar, but not as lush now.

I'm wondering if this discovery will warrant the creation of a new genus? I suggest Octapicea.

"It looks similar, but not as lush now."

All the more reason for someone to graft it.

Many spruces develop hanging side branches with some age. With Norway spruce in particular this is almost standard, Colorado spruce often does this also, and so on. With Siskiyou spruce the curtains of pendent side branches it develops have caused it to be called weeping spruce - and are the main reason to plant it. Sitka spruce eventually produces very long branches with hanging branchlets all the way along.

As with other topics that have come up here other posters having "never seen" a recurring phenomenon I simply cannot account for, or do anything about. Probably regarding typical branching habits for various spruces - with so many pictures of everything on the web now - it is simply matter of doing internet image searches to see what is out there.

bboy, you seem to be the only one saying this is somehow a typical growth pattern...

maybe we should call it Picea abies seattlensis?

You get around...I don't know what you do but somehow I've always figured you must be a working landscape architect. Take a picture of one if they are so common in the PNW! Everyone has a smartphone these days.

I live in the middle of picea abies land, they are everywhere around here, almost 50% of all trees, and I have never seen anything like this tree. Neither have anyone else that visit a local tree forum where I put the picture up two days ago.

Thanks huggorm...we aren't exactly in Picea abies land but they are very common in the northeast, from DC up to Boston (and beyond). I have seen hundreds and would have remembered one that looked like this.