CONIFERS 



63 



the rounded apex, rather more than twice as long as their emarginate or nearly 

 truncate bracts broad at the apex and terminating in short slender tips; seeds i'-l' 

 lono-, acute at the base, dark dull brown, with lustrous rose-colored wings widest 

 near the middle and nearly truncate at the apex. 



A tree, on the California sierras 200-250 high, with a trunk often 6 in diame- 

 ter or in the interior of the continent rarely more than 125 tall, with a trunk seldom 

 exceeding 3 in diameter, a narrow spire-like crown of short stout branches clothed 

 with long lateral branches pointing forward and forming great frond-like masses of 

 foliage, and glabrous lustrous comparatively stout branchlets dark orange color dur- 

 ing their first season, becoming light grayish green or pale reddish brown, and ulti- 

 mately gray or grayish brown. Winter-buds globose, |'-^' thick. Bark becoming 

 on old trunks sometimes 5'-6' thick near the ground and deeply divided into 

 broad rounded ridges broken on the surface into irregularly shaped plate-like scales. 



Wood very light, soft, coarse-grained and not strong nor durable, pale brown or 

 sometimes nearly white; occasionally manufactured into lumber and in northern 

 California used for packing-cases and butter-tubs. 



Distribution. Rocky Mountains of southern Colorado, westward to the mountain 

 ranges of California, extending northward into northern Oregon, and southward 

 over the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona into northern Mexico; the only Fir- 

 tree in the arid regions of the Great Basin and of southern Xew Mexico and 

 Arizona. 



Often planted as an ornamental tree in Europe, and in the eastern states where it 

 grows more vigorously than other Fir-trees. 



***Leaves yellow-green. 



Bracts of the cone-scales with long rigid Jlat tips ; pinter-buds elongated, with 

 loosely imbricated scales. 



7. Abies venusta, K. Koch. Silver Fir. 



Leaves thin, flat, rigid, linear or linear-lanceolate, gradually or abruptly nar- 

 rowed toward the base, often falcate especially on fertile branches, acuminate, with 

 long slender callous tips, dark yellow-green, lustrous and slightly rounded on the upper 



