490 ABIES AMABILIS. 



Pinus amabilis,* Douglas in Comp. Bot. Mag. II. 93 (1837). Parlatore, D. C. 

 Prodr. XVI. 426 (in part). Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 104. 



Eng. Lovely Fir. Amer. White Fir. Germ. Liebliche Weisstanne. 



Abies amabilis is an alpine tree whose area of distribution, so far 

 as at present known, is confined to the mountain ranges within the 

 States of Oregon and Washington, and southern British Columbia 

 from Vancouver Island to the Fraser river. On the Cascade 

 mountains its vertical range is from 3,000 to 6,000 feet above 

 sea-level ; on the Olympic mountains of north-west Washington 

 where it is common, and where it probably attains its greatest 

 development, its vertical range is from 1,200 to 4,500 feet, and in 

 Columbia the range is somewhat higher. At high altitudes it grows 

 singly or in small isolated groves ; in other places it is associated 

 with Tsuga Albertiana, Abies nobilis and A. grandis, or with Pinus 

 montieola, Tsuga Mertensiana and Abies lasiocarpa. f 



For a long series of years Abies amabilis was one of the rarest of 

 trees in the British Pinetum, and as regards its origin one of the 

 most obscure of the north-west American Firs, so much so that on 

 the other side of the Atlantic its very existence as a species was 

 called into question, and this discovery of Douglas began to be regarded 

 as a tradition and a myth. Here, however, in Great Britain, belief 

 in its existence never faltered, for we had in our midst living evidences, 

 very few, it is true, but representing a genuine and unquestionably 

 distinct species. The little that is known of the discovery of Abies 

 amabilis was communicated by Douglas to Sir W. J. Hooker in letters 

 that were published by the latter in the " Companion to the Botanical 

 Magazine " about three years after the untimely death of the explorer. 

 From this correspondence we learn that he first saw Abies amabilis 

 in September 1825 on the top of a high mountain south of the 

 Grand Rapids of the Columbia river after a laborious climb of fifteen 

 hours. By frequent mishaps, owing to the difficulty of making his 

 way through forests never before traversed by a naturalist, nor perhaps 

 even 'by a white man except occasionally by a trapper or hunter in 

 the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, Douglas lost a great part 

 of his specimens both during this and his second mission to north-west 

 America ; it was not till he had accomplished his remarkable journey 

 up the Columbia in 1830 that he secured a few cones and seeds 

 which he dispatched to England late in that year.J During the fifty 

 years that followed, many naturalists and seed collectors visited the 

 region of the Columbia river, but all of them failed to re-discover 



* It is to be regretted that the discoverer of this and other north-west American Abies 

 should have given them mere laudatory names. Amabilis, grandis, nobilis, vcnusta 

 (Douglas) and magnified (Murray) denote no recognisable specific character, and any one of 

 them is as applicable to the other species as to that for which it is used. 



t Silva of North America, XII. p. 126. 



As Douglas was at that time in the service of the Horticultural Society of London, 

 the seeds were sent to the Society and were sown in their garden at Chiswick in the 

 following year. Plants laised from these seeds were subsequently distributed among the 

 Fellows (Trans. Hort. Soc. Lond., ser. 2, Vol. II. p. 376). I have only been able to trace 

 three trees whose origin may be unhesitatingly attributed to this source, viz. : one at 

 Dropmore planted in 1835 ; one at Orton Hall near Peterborough ; and a third at Bicton, 

 since dead. 



