This is a pretty solid evergreen tree. I've seen it take strong wind gusts, heavy/wet snow loads, a foot of rain in 48 hours, and drought with no problem. Ours is well established and is approximately 35-40 years old and it's about as tall as it is old. When we moved into this house I limbed it up about 15' and it looks real great. In the winter it does shed a bunch of dead sticks but I guess that's how it keeps itself healthy. The cones aren't very vigorous I have a single volunteer. It's 2 years old and about 4" high. Also, the roots are pretty shallow but you can garden underneath if careful. I have a ground cover geranium under it as well as a few lavender "bushes." The only thing I don't like about it is that the leader splits into two about halfway up, and now at the top there is a handful of leaders. Just minor aesthetics, though.

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Another fungus disease that affects blue spruce, at least in the upper midwest, is Rhizosphaera kalkhoffii, which produces a condition called Rhizosphaera needle cast. That condition causes needles on the inner parts of lower branches to turn brown and die. The fungus can infest other spruce (Picea) species, as well as some pines, Douglas fir, and western hemlock.

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Utah and Colorado's state tree.

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Colorado Spruce is native to areas of the Rocky Mountains from southeast Idaho, western Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona on valley slopes to along bottomlands along watercourses. In the wild it usually grows about 80 to 100 feet with a 1 to 2 feet diameter trunk. In landscapes it grows about 30 to 60 feet high and about 15 to 20 feet wide. The seed cones are tan with thin papery scales and get about 3.5 inches long. The needles are 1 to 1.5 inches long, are painfully prickly, and range in color from slightly bluish green to blue-green to very blue.The growth rate in the wild usually is about 1/2 to 1 foot/year, but trees grown and used in nurseries usually grow about 1 to1.5 feet/year. The more blue the needles being covered with a bluish wax, the slower the growth. The extremely blue cultivars that are grafted onto a species stock are slow growing of closer to around 1/2 foot/year, and more expensive to buy. This western species is extremely commonly planted in landscapes in the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, the Northeast, and the upper South of the US, and everyone knows it as the Blue Spruce. In its wild range it lives over 400 years, but a lot less in landscapes farther east, often living around 50 to 150 years. This species gets picked on by Cytospora Canker disease, some Needle Cast diseases, Bagworms, Spider Mites, and Cooley Spruce Gall Aphid. Most of these problems are not fatal and I've seen many trees looking good for decades and still branched to the ground or not. However, Cytospora Canker, a fungus disease that kills bark, twigs, and branches, often does kill off a fair number of trees in the more humid Midwest and farther east, starting with dying on the bottom and working its way upward. Many times this dying upward will stop so that the trunk just shows. This is a good quality ornamental conifer that is windfirm. My unhappiness with this spruce is that it is so painful to touch, and I would rather go with the White Spruce instead, as the most similar landscape conifer. The Engelman Spruce with a larger range in the Rocky Mountains is so similar, except with shorter needles and smaller cones.

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Slow growing, very symmetrical evergreen. Quite striking with its blue-green needles, very prickly. The inner bark and young shoots are edible. The bark and pitch may be used for medicinal purposes. Legend has it that the sharp needles give it special powers for protection against evil thoughts.

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