124 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CONIFER-S;. 



Jeffrey^ found it on the mountains of northern California, but for many years his specimen was 

 believed to have been gathered from a tree of Ahies lasiocarpa^ and it was not until 1873 that 

 Engelmann was able to make known the true characters and the distribution of Ahies concolor. 

 Introduced into England by Jeffrey and by Lobb in 1852, it has proved one of the handsomest and 

 most satisfactory of garden conifers from southern Scandinavia to northern Italy .^ On the Atlantic 

 seaboard it is hardy as far north, at least, as the coast of Maine ; and Ahies concolor from the Rocky 

 Mountains growing here during the last twenty-five years always vigorously, compact in habit, beautiful 

 in its varied shades of blue, and free from diseases and the attacks of disfiguring insects, is now more 

 full of promise as an ornament of the parks of eastern America than any other Fir-tree.^ 



produce of a smaU piece of ground which he had bought, but 

 maintaining his activity as a botanical collector. 



Many of the plants collected by Fendler in New Mexico were 

 published by Asa Gray in the fourth volume of the new series of 

 the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in a 

 classical paper entitled Plantce Fendleriance Novi-MexicancB. The 

 name of this honest, kindly, simple, earnest man is preserved in 

 our gardens in Fendlera, a beautiful-flowered shrub of the Saxi- 

 frage family, of Texas and New Mexico. (See Gray, Am. Jour. 

 Sci. ser. 3, xxiv. 169. — Canby, Bat, Gazette, x. 285, 301 [An Auto- 

 hiography and some Reminiscences of the late August Fendler^.y 



^ See xi. 41. 



European collections. A seedling form with erect branches (Abies 

 concolor fastigiata, Carriere, Reu. Hort, 1890, 137) appeared in 

 France a few years ago in the nursery of Thibault & Keteleer at 

 Sceaux, near Paris. 



® In the eastern states Ahies concolor from Colorado is the only 

 American Fir-tree which is really satisfactory in cultivation. There 

 are a number of specimens of the California tree in different gar- 

 dens from eastern Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. (See Parsons, 

 Gardener's Monthly, xvii. 369 [as Picea Parsonsiana']. — Sargent, 

 Garden and Forest, vi. 458.) These appear as hardy as the plants 

 raised from seeds gathered in Colorado, but they grow with less 

 vigor and rapidity, and the largest of them, which are from forty 



1 



^ Under the names of Ahies concolor violacea and Ahies violacea, to fifty feet tall, are already thin near the ground, and have passed 

 the bluest leaved forms of the Kocky Mountain tree are found in the period of their greatest beauty. ' 



EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 



" ? 



Plate DCXIIL Abies concolor. 



1. A branch with staminate flowers, natural size. 



w 



2. A staminate flower, enlarged. 



3. An anther, front view, enlarged. 



4. An anther, side view, enlarged. 



5. A branch with pistillate flowers, natural size. 



6. A scale of a pistillate flower, lower side, with its bract 



and ovules, enlarged. 



7. A fruiting branch, natural size. 



8. A cone-scale, lower side, with, its bract, natural size. 



9. A cone-scale, upper side, with its seeds, natural size. 



10. A seed, natural size. 



11. An end of a lateral branch, natural size. 



12. Cross section of a leaf magnified fifteen diameters. 



13. Winter-buds, natural size. 



