Abies 
Menziesii 
138 ARBORETUM NOTES. 
CONIFER. 
ABIETINAZ. 
The description in Gordon’s Pinetuim answers 
exactly to our plant. 
Our tree cannot be said to have ‘‘ the habit and 
leaves of the Silver Firs’ as Don says of his 
Pinus menziesii. 
The leaves are essentially those of a Spruce, 
though making a slight approach to the characters 
of the Silver group; they aré not “flat,” ome 
distinctly four-cornered, yet decidedly flattened ; 
the angles very unequal, the two lateral ones much 
more acute than the other two, and the diameter 
from one of these lateral angles to the other much 
greater than that from the front to the back. 
Thus two of the four sides form, in fact, the upper 
face of the leaf, and the other two the under face ; 
and Endlicher’s term of ‘‘compresso tetragona”’ is 
perfectly correct. The two upper sides (the front 
of the leaf) are of a full deep green colour, without 
any mixture of white, very smooth; the two lower 
or back ones white, like the back of the Silver Fir 
leaf. The leaves are about one inch long, very 
straight and rigid (not ‘‘incurved”’) tipped with a 
remarkably sharp and hard, almost thorn-like 
point, and articulated at the base with a 
tubercle projecting from the branch. 
The young branches are very thickly covered 
with leaves, which spread in all directions, yet not 
quite equally, but showing sometimes of a two 
ranked tendency. . 
