Picea jezoensis (sometimes misspelled Picea yezoensis), the dark-bark spruce,[2] Ezo spruce, Yezo spruce,[3][4] or Jezo spruce,[5] is a large evergreen tree growing to 30–50 m tall and with a trunk diameter of up to 2 m. It is native to northeast Asia, from the mountains of central Japan and the Changbai Mountains on the China-North Korea border, north to eastern Siberia, including the Sikhote-Alin, Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and Kamchatka.
It is found in cold but humid temperate rain forests, and nowhere does its range extend more than 400 km from the Pacific Ocean.
There are two geographical subspecies, treated as varieties by some authors, and as distinct species by others: Ezo spruce is very closely related to Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), which replaces it on the opposite side of the north Pacific.
Jezo spruce is important in the Russian Far East and northern Japan, for timber and paper production.
The Ainu string instrument called tonkori has a body made from Jezo Spruce.