Short answers, pulled from the story.
Albert Dietrich established the genus Picea in 1824 to classify a group of coniferous evergreen trees. The name derives from Latin pix meaning pitch which refers to the resin found in species like Picea abies.
The oldest reported single spruce tree reaches 852 years while clonal groups like Old Tjikko in Dalarna Sweden claim ages up to 9,550 years through layering reproduction. A surviving branch diverged only about 30 million years ago meaning most historical crown group members have no living descendants.
Each spruce needle attaches singly to small persistent peg-like structures called pulvini on the twigs that remain after the needle falls between four and ten years old leaving rough surfaces on branches. Needles are more or less square in cross-section unlike the round needles of many pines.
European spruce bark beetles lay eggs inside the phloem of Picea abies and other conifers across Europe and Asia creating tunnels that can cut off nutrient flow and kill entire trees if present in large numbers. Sirococcus blight fungus first appeared in Germany and the United Kingdom in 2014 spreading via rain-splashed asexual conidia.
Spruce serves as building wood under names including North American timber SPF and whitewood appearing commonly in Canadian Lumber Standard graded lumber for general construction work and crates. Sitka spruce and Engelmann spruce function as standard tonewood for stringed instrument soundboards including guitars while Norway spruces from Dolomites Paneveggio Violins Forest have supplied materials for centuries possibly reaching Antonio Stradivari himself.