118 



8ILVA OF NOBTH AMERICA. 



CONIEEBiE. 



hypoderm cells scattered in an interrupted layer under tlie epidermis of the upper side and only slightly 

 developed on the edges and keels; on sterile branches the leaves are rather remote, rounded and 

 conspicuously emarginate at the apex, from an inch arid a half to two inches and a quarter long and 

 usually about an eighth of an inch wide, and spread in two ranks nearly at right angles to the 

 branchlet y on cone-bearing branches they are rather more crowded, generally from an inch to an inch 

 and a half in length, less spreading or often nearly erect, and bluntly pointed and often notched at 

 the apex ; on the leading shoots of vigorous young trees they are from one half to three quarters of an 

 inch long and acute or acuminate at the apex, which is furnished with a sharp rigid callous tip. The 

 staminate flowers are oblong-cylindrical, and from one half to two thirds of an inch in length, with pale 

 yellow anthers sometimes tinged with purple when they first emerge from the bud, and at maturity 

 hang on slender pedicels one third of an inch long. The pistillate flowers are cylindrical, slender, from 

 three quarters of an inch to an inch long, a quarter of an inch thick, and light yellow-green, with semi- 

 orbicular scales and short oblong bracts, emarginate and denticulate or laciniate at the broad obcordate 

 apex, which is furnished with a short strongly reflexed tip. The cones are cylindrical, slightly narrowed 

 to the rounded and sometimes retuse apex, puberulous, bright green, from two to four inches in length, 

 and from an inch to an inch and a quarter in thickness, with scales which are usually about two thirds 

 as long as they are wide, and are gradually or abruptly narrowed from their broad apex, and three 

 or four times as long as their short pale green bracts, which are only slightly contracted below the 

 obcordate irregularly serrate apex, which is furnished with a short mucro. The seeds are three eighths 

 of an inch long, light brown, with pale lustrous wings from one half to five eighths of an inch in length 

 and nearly as broad at their abruptly widened rounded end as they are long. 



One of the most distinct of the American Fir-trees in its widely spreading elongated dark green 

 emarginate leaves, and in its green cones with included bracts, Ahies grandis attains its greatest size 

 on the alluvial bottom-lands of streams near the coast of southern British Columbia and of Washington, 

 Oregon, and northern Cahfornia. It is distributed from the northern part of Vancouver Island^ 

 southward to Mendocino County, California,^ and eastward along the mountains of northern Washington 

 and Idaho to the western slopes of the continental divide in northern Montana, and southward in the 

 interior along both slopes of the Cascade Mountains ® and to the Blue Mountains of Washington and 

 Oregon, the Powder Eiver Mountains of Oregon, and to the Coeur d' Alene and Bitter Eoot Mountains of 



Idaho and Montana. 



White 



always on moist ground through the forests of Douglas Spruces and Hemlocks, and on the bottom-lands 

 of streams with the Tideland Spruce and the Arbor Vitse ; in California, where it does not range inland 

 many miles or beyond the direct influence of the fogs of the Pacific, its companions are the Eedwood, 

 which with long naked stems it often rivals in height, and the Tideland Spruce. It is common in 

 Washington and northern Oregon from the sea up to elevations of four thousand feet above it on 

 the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains ; it is less abundant on their eastern slopes, but farther 

 east is a common tree in forests of Spruces, White Pines, Hemlocks, and Arbor Vitses, on moist slopes, 

 and in the neighborhood of streams from elevations of two thousand five hundred up to seven thousand 



feet above the sea-level. 



The wood of Abies grandis is very light, soft, coarse-grained, and neither strong nor durable ; it 



^ G. M. Dawson, Can. Nat. n. ser. ix. 326. — Maeoun, Cat Can. 

 PL 474. 



2 Abies grandis is abundant and of large size on the banks of the 

 Navarro River in Mendocino County from the seacoasfc for a dis- 

 tance of about twelve miles inland {teste Carl Purdy). This is the 

 most southern point on the coast of California at which I have 

 heard of this tree. 



^ The southern limits of the range of Ahies grandis on the Cas- 

 cade Mountains of Oregon are still uncertain, as it is not always 



easy to distinguish this tree by the meagre specimens usiially pre- 

 served in herbaria from the nearly related Abies concolor, which 

 replaces it in the interior of southern Oregon. It appears, how- 

 ever, to extend along their western slopes to at least as far south 

 as the head-waters of the Umqua Hiver, and along their eastern 

 slope to Mt. Jefferson. Between Ashland on the west and Upper 

 Klamath Lake on the east of the mountains, the White Fir is always 

 Abies concoloTj which also replaces Abies grandis in the interior of 



■ ■ * 



California. 



