114 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CONIPEE^. 



The short crowded tough branches, which are usually slightly pendulous below, generally clothe the 

 trunks o£ the oldest trees to nearly their base and form dense spire-like sharp-pointed heads which are 

 remarkable, even among Fir-trees, for their extreme slenderness ; ^ or sometimes the lower branches 

 perish on the largest individuals, leaving the massive trunks naked for fifty or sixty feet. The winter- 

 buds are subglobose, from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in thickness, very resinous, and covered by 

 light orange-brown scales. The branchlets are comparatively stout and are coated during three or four 

 years with fine rufous pubescence, or rarely become glabrous before the end of their first season ; when 

 they emerge from the buds they are pale orange-brown, and, growing lighter colored during their 

 second season, become gray or silvery white. The leaves are flat, with hypoderm cells which form a 

 broken band under the epidermis on the upper side and are crowded along the edges and keel; they are 

 blue-green, very glaucous during their first season, marked on the upper surface but generally only 

 above the middle with four or five rows of stomata on each side of the conspicuous midgroove, and on 

 the lower surface with two broad bands each of seven or eight rows of stomata; they are crowded and 

 nearly erect by the twist at their base, and on lower branches are from an inch to an inch and three 

 quarters long, about one twelfth of an inch wide, and rounded and occasionally emarginate at the apex; 

 and on upper and fertile branches they are somewhat thickened and usually acute, with short callous 

 tips, and generally not more than half an inch long, while on the leading shoot they are flattened, 

 closely appressed, and terminate in long slender rigid points. The staminate flowers are cylindrical, 

 from one half to three quarters of an inch in length and an eighth of an inch in thickness, with 

 dark indigo-blue anthers turning to violet when nearly ready to open ; and the pistillate flowers are 

 oblong-cylindrical and an inch in length, with dark violet-purple obovate scales much shorter than 

 their bracts, which are contracted into slender tips about a third of an inch long, and strongly 

 reflexed. The cones are oblong-cylindrical, rounded, truncate, or depressed at the somewhat narrowed 

 apex, from two and a half to four inches long and about an inch and a half thick; their scales are 

 gradually narrowed from the broad rounded or nearly truncate apex to the base, and, although usually 

 longer than they are broad, are sometimes much broader than they are long; they are dark purple 

 and puberulous on the exposed parts, and about three times the length of their bracts, which are 

 oblong-obovate, laciniately cut on the margins, rounded, emarginate, and abruptly contracted at the 

 apes into long slender tips, and dark red-brown.^ The seeds are about a quarter of an inch in length, 

 with deep violet-colored lustrous wings which cover nearly the entire surface of the scales, and often 

 become pale yellow-brown in drying. 



Abies lasiocarpa is an inhabitant of high mountain slopes and summits, and is distributed from 

 at least latitude 61° north in Alaska ^ southward along the coast ranges to the Olympic Mountains of 

 Washington, and over all the high ranges of British Columbia and Alberta ; it extends along the 

 Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon,^ over the mountain rang-es of eastern Washing-ton and 



Oregon, and of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colora 



^ The slender spire-like habit of this tree, which always charac- 

 terizes it and makes it easily distinguishable from the other Firs 

 of western North America, is well shown in the illustration on 

 page 380 of the fourth volume of Garden and Forest, which repre- 

 sents it growing with Tsuga Mertensiana near the timber-line on 

 Mt. Rainier in Washington. 



^ The cone-scales of Abies lasiocarpa vary more in shape than 

 those of any other North American Fir-tree and are of little diag- 

 nostic value. I have seen them in Montana seven eighths of an 

 inch long and three quarters of an inch wide, and in Arizona 

 and Oregon nearly an inch wide and half an inch long, while an 

 examination of a large series of cones from different parts of the 



country has shown all sorts of variations within these extreme 

 limits of size. 



^ See O. M. Dawson, Garden and Forest, I 58 ; Rep. Geolog. 



Surv. Can. n. ser. iii. pt. i. Appx. i. 186 B. — Macoun, Rep. Geolog. 

 Surv. Can. n. ser. iii. pt. i. Appx. iii. 226 B. < 



^ The most southern point at which Abies lasiocarpa has been 

 noticed on the Cascade Mountains is at an elevation of five thou- 

 sand two hundred feet above the sea about ten miles south of 

 Crater Lake, near the extreme southern end of the range (teste 

 E. I. Applegate). 



Ifc is a curious fact that this tree has been unable to cross the 

 lava-covered plains south of the southern end of the Cascade 

 Mountains to Mt. Shasta, and that it is entirely absent from the 

 high California mountains, although Tsuga Mertensiana, its con- 

 stant companion on the northern coast mountains and on the Cas- 

 cade Range, abounds on Mt. Shasta and extends far southward 

 along the Sierra Nevada. 



