Data collected periodically since 1975 in a range-wide Black spruce provenance trial replicated on four sites in Québec, Canada, were used to answer two questions: (1) for given climatic conditions, what is the relative importance of the provenance site and of the test site in explaining the variation in height growth and survival? (2) what are the relationships between height growth, survival, and the proportion of forked trees? In each test site, one hundred provenances from the Atlantic coast to Alaska were tested. Path analysis indicated a strong effect of test site climate and a low effect of provenance site climate on both height growth and survival, as well as an absence of interaction between provenance and test site climate on both attributes. The clear trend of height growth decline with increasing proportions of forked trees may result both from the relatively high allocation of biomass to branches resulting in relatively low height growth, and from the relatively high occurrence of late and early frost days. A weak trend of height growth decline with increasing survival rates was observed. This study is a preliminary step of a collaborative research recently initiated by the INRA and CFS scientists in order to develop process-based growth and wood quality models for Black spruce and that explicitly take into account the contribution of the genetics as well as the environment in the variation observed.