Entry · Saturday, May 9, 2026
Plate XXIX., A Spruce, Suburban photographed in residential profile, from the lawn it has annexed.
Photo by The Editorial Board
Spruce, Suburban
/SPROOS, sub-UR-buhn/ n.- 1. A mature evergreen specimen (genus Picea) cultivated as a residential or municipal landscape feature; characteristically pyramidal, with branches sweeping low to the ground in a dense conical mass.
- 2. colloq. A tree thiccc enough at the base to obscure the property line behind it, capable of generating its own circumference of mulched ground simply by being.
In a sentence,
"The Spruce, Suburban grew so thiccc the lawn around it became a defined ring, the grass simply ended where the lower branches began, and stayed that way through three mowing seasons."
Etymology,
From spruce (Middle English, derived from "Pruce," an old name for Prussia, where the Norway Spruce was widely sourced for ship masts and timber) + suburban (Latin sub- "near" + urbs "city"). The suburban specimen, planted ornamentally rather than commercially, has the freedom to expand laterally; its lower branches uncut, its base unencumbered, its volume answerable only to the planting setback.