Both Picea
Picea glauca vs Picea pungens
These two are not on this page because a keyword tool suggested them. They are here because our own identification model genuinely mistook one for the other, on real photographs, 3 times. We publish the rate, and then we tell you what actually separates them.
Side by sidefigs. a and b
Picea glauca
white spruce
Picea pungens
blue spruce
How often our model gets it wrong measured, not estimated
| When the plant was | The model said | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Picea pungens | Picea glauca | 3 of 20 (15%) |
Measured on 38,299 openly licensed, research-grade photographs. Full method and dataset.
What actually separates themon the record
| Family | Both Pinaceae. The family does not separate them. |
|---|---|
| Genus | Both Picea. Congeners, which is why this is hard. |
What we do not have yet: the diagnostic morphological character that a botanist would key on, from a source we can cite. We are not going to invent one. Until we have it, this page tells you the two are genuinely confusable, how often, and what the taxonomy and the flowering data do and do not settle.