Artwork by Bente King
Spruce Branch Lokta Card
$5.00 – $8.00
- Our images are set in a frame on this beautiful, handmade paper from the Nepalese Lokta shrub.
- This tree-free paper is both environmentally friendly and sustainably harvested.
- Each card comes with an envelope and is packaged individually in 100% biodegradable cellophane sleeve.
- Cards are blank on the inside for your message.
- Back of card has educational story, shown below in description.
Back of Card DESCRIPTION
Spruces are ornamental, steeple-shaped evergreen trees of cold climates whose needlelike leaves are somewhat four-angled, short, stiff and sharp. Spruces grow to the northern limit of trees; forests thin down to dwarf specimens extending far into the tundra. To the south, one species persists on mountaintops as far south as Georgia.
Spruces are often used as Christmas trees. The wood is soft, light, resinous and straight-grained. It is valuable for sounding boards in pianos, construction work and boat building. Tannin and burgundy pitch used in varnishes and medicinal compounds comes from the bark of certain species. Some species are tapped for turpentine.
The most widespread and common spruce in North America is the exotic Norway Spruce of the European Alps, Scandinavia and western Russia. It was brought by early settlers and was partly used to rectify the disastrous effects of clearing the native woods, which left farmland exposed. Spruces were planted to form shelterbelts on both sides of the U.S./Canada border.
All things in nature have symbolic qualities as well, and the spruce represents healing, intuition and new realizations.
artwork by Bente King © 2001
text by Steve Sierigk
