Bonhoeffer’s Sitka Spruce, the largest tree in the Gardens, stands next to Kiosk 9; many young Sitka Spruce surround it. Rough broken bark indicates a spruce, but its sharp needles are the best indicator. It can grow to 15’ in diameter, 3 00 feet tall, and live 800 years.  Its wood is very strong and was once used for airplane propellers. During WW II the largest plane ever then built, the “Spruce Goose,” was in part (mostly birch) made of Sitka Spruce (it’s now housed in the Evergreen Museum, McMinnville, Oregon 256 miles south of Exit 215). Once an important lumber and pulp tree, it is rarely planted in favor of Douglas Fir. Only remnants of its original forests remain. (In the parcel just west of the Farm, the Tree Farm planted each Western Red Cedar seedling with a Sitka Spruce in the same hole to discourage Blacktail Deer, cutting/removing the spruce after the cedar was established.)  It is the West’s 4th tallest tree (Redwood, Sequoia, & Douglas Fir are taller). WWU’s SAM extinction probability is slight, <.000001% as spruce species are exhibiting the ability to migrate; see the URL below regarding their recent appearance in the Artic tundra.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_sitchensis
http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Picea+sitchensis
https://www.evergreenmuseum.org/exhibit/the-spruce-goose/
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Kiosk-08.pdf
https://offbeatoregon.com/1301c-great-war-planes-made-of-oregon-spruce.html
https://qz.com/spruce-trees-have-arrived-in-the-arctic-tundra-a-centur-1849406537?utm_source=YPL

Best answer:
What parts of the Spruce Goose was made of Sitka Spruce?

Propellers
Airframe
Both are Spruce

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