Picea orientalis(L.) Peterm.

Caucasian SpruceOriental SpruceOriental spruce

WFO wfo-0000736005 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. a Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-07-08 / obs. 185203920
Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. b Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185196011
Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. c Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184597164
Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. d Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184500758
Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. e Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184426103
Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. f Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184497772
Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. g Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184266306
Picea orientalis, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. h Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184340440

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 3 botanical countries

Regions where Picea orientalis is native: North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye North CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiye
Native distribution of Picea orientalis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
North Caucasus NCS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 409 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.0 °C -8.2 °C 0.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.1 °C 20.9 °C 28.5 °C
Annual rainfall 654 mm 1,125 mm 2,553 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 95 mm 217 mm 504 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 409 research-grade observations of Picea orientalis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 12 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Abies orientalis (L.) Poir.
  • Abies wittmanniana Voss
  • Picea orientalis f. atrovirens Schelle
  • Picea orientalis f. aurea (Otto) Beissn.
  • Picea orientalis f. aureospicata Beissn.
  • Picea orientalis f. nana (Carrière) Rehder
  • Picea orientalis f. nutans Schelle
  • Picea orientalis var. aurea Otto
  • Picea orientalis var. nana Carrière
  • Picea withmanniana Carrière
  • Picea wittmanniana Fisch. ex Gordon
  • Pinus orientalis L.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.