This image is courtesy of “Michael F” of Britain, a frequent commenter on BPotD and contributor on the garden's plant forums. (BPotD Submissions via the forums | original image). Michael has a more than keen interest in conifers, so I'm grateful that he's helping prop up the number of conifer images on BPotD compared to the overwhelming amount of photos of flowering plants (In the new year, I'll pester the person who was going to submit the occasional alga image).
Black spruce or, less commonly, swamp spruce is distributed in every province and territory of Canada, the northeastern United States and France (okay, not France proper, but the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon). However, this image was taken in Kyloe Wood, Northumberland, England, where a population of the plants has naturalised. While growing up in Manitoba, I learned to associate this tree with a particular sound – a high-pitched buzz caused by a swarm of mosquitoes, who also inhabit the bogs and lowlands favoured by this tree.
A tree of economic importance in North America for the pulp and paper industry, it is no surprise that there are many excellent resources about it online, including Picea mariana via the Flora of North America project and Picea mariana from the Silvics of North America.
Photography resource link: Digicams vs. DSLRs, a guide to the pros and cons of each by Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape.
Picea mariana - Z2 - RHS Index of Garden Plants, Griffiths
A cultivated specimen at Whitney Gardens nursery, Brinnon, WA was 49'(14.9m) high in 1995. Another, in the USFS Arboretum at Wind River (southern WA) was 51'(15.5m) high the same year.
Ref: Van Pelt, CHAMPION TREES OF WASHINGTON STATE (1996, Washington)
There's one reported in Ireland 28m tall and 79cm diameter, though I'd like to check its identity (last time I saw a fairly large tree in Britain labelled Picea mariana, it turned out to be Picea glehnii)