CONIFERS. 



8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



127 



nearly white sapwood, and contains dark-colored resinous bands of small summer cells and numerous 

 thin medullary rays. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is O.42285 a cubic foot weighing 

 26.35 pounds. Under the name of larch it is occasionally used in Washington in the interior finish 

 of buildings. 



Ahies amabilis was discovered on the Cascade Mountains just south of the Columbia Eiver in 

 September, 1825, by David Douglas, who introduced it into English gardens.* 



Unsurpassed among Fir-trees in the beauty of its snowy bark, dark green lustrous foliage, and 

 great purple cones, Ahies amabilis can never be forgotten by those who have seen it at midsummer 

 towering high above alpine meadows clothed with Lilies "and great nodding Dogtooth Violets, Bryanthus 

 and Cassiope, Rhododendrons, Lupins, Painted-cups, and all the other flowers which make the upper 

 valleys of the northern Cascade Mountains the most charming natural gardens of the continent. When 

 transferred from its mountain home Ahies amabilis does not really flourish, although a few of the 

 oldest specimens in Europe have produced cones.^ On the Atlantic seaboard it grows very slowly and 

 gives little promise of becoming an ornament of our gardens.^ 



^ Douglas, Companion Bat. Mag. ii. 93. See, also, Sargent, Ga 'd. 

 Chron. n. ser. xvi. 7. 



2 See Fowler, Gard. Chron. 1872, 286. 



Very few plants Laving been raised from Douglas's seeds, Ahies 

 amabilis has always been rare in Europe until 1882, wben large 

 supplies of seeds were sent to England from Oregon. 



® Probably the oldest plant oi Abies amabilis in the eastern United 

 States is in the Pinetum of Mr. Josiah Hoopes of West Chester, 

 Pennsylvania. It is a graft taken from the plant in the Edin- 

 burgh Botanic Garden raised from seeds collected by Douglas. It 

 has grown very slowly, and in 1893, when it was about twenty-five 

 years old, it was only six feet high. (See Garden and Forest, ii. 

 228 ; vi. 458.) In eastern Massachusetts, where Abies amabilis 



was introduced in 1880 through the Arnold Arboretum, it has 

 proved rather tender and grows very slowly. 



Even in its native forests A hies amabilis is a slow-growing tree. 

 The log specimen in the Jesup Collection of North American 

 Woods in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, 

 cut on the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, near the Columbia River, 

 is seventeen and one half inches in diameter inside the bark and 

 one hundred and eighty years old, with two and one eighth inches 

 of sapwood containing seventy layers of annual growth. A tree 

 cut in 1896, on the banks of the Solduc River, Washington, in a 

 region of excessive rainfall specially favorable for the rapid growth 

 of trees, was one hundred and twenty-five feet high, with a trunk 

 nineteen inches in diameter, and one hundred and fifty years old. 



