ABIES FRASEKI. 599 



Abies Fraseri, 



^ A slender short-lived tree with a trunk rarely attaining a height of 

 /O feet and a diameter of 2 -5 feet; more commonly 3040 feet 

 high and 1824 inches in diameter near the ground and covered with 

 greyish brown bark marked with broad shallow fissures. Branches 

 spreading, slender, rather close-set and ramified distichously. Branchlets 

 opposite or alternate with pale furrowed bark. Buds ovoid-cylindric, with 

 small chestnut-brown perulse usually coated with a film of resin. 

 Leaves persistent four five years, linear, flat, obtuse or emarginatej 

 0-25 0-75 inch long, spirally inserted on the axis and spreading at 

 nearly a right angle to it, dark green above, with a pale stomatiferous 

 band on each side of a distinct midrib below. Staminate flowers 

 axillary near the tips of the branchlets, numerous, often crowded, 

 cylindric, O25 inch long, surrounded at the base by a few involucral 

 bracts. Cones solitary or in clusters of two and three together, ovoid- 

 cylindric, about two inches long and somewhat more than an inch 

 broad ; scales orbicular-cuneate with entire apical margin and contracted 

 on the basal side to a narrow claw ; bract longer than the scale, 

 oblong-cuneate, mucronate, with lacerated margins and reflexed tip. 



Abies Fraseri, Lindley in Penny Cyclop. I. 30 (1833). Forbes, Pinet. Woburn, 

 111, t. 38. Link in Lmnrea, XV. 531. Carriere, Traite Conif. ed. II. 270. 

 Hoopes, Evergreens, 202. McNab, Proceed. R. Irish Acad. II. ser. 2, 684, fig. 10. 

 Sargent in Garden and Forest, II. (1889), p. 472, with fig. ; and Silva N. Amer. 

 XII. 105, t. 609. Beissner, Nadelholzk. 462. Masters in Card. Chron VIII 

 ser. 3 (1890), p. 684, with fig. ; and Journ R. Hort. Soc XIV. 191. 



Picea Fraseri, London, Arb. et Frut. Brit. IV. 2340, with figs. Gordon Pinet 

 ed. II. 205. 



Pinus Fraseri, Lambert, Genus Pinus, ed. II. Vol. II. t. 42 (1837). Endlicher 

 Synops. Conif. 91. Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 419. 



Eng. Eraser's Fir. Amer. Double Balsam Fir. Germ. Eraser's Balsamtanne. 

 Ital. Abete di Eraser. 



Discovered by the Scotch botanist and collector whose name it 

 bears so long ago as the first decade of the nineteenth century, it 

 is remarkable that very little was definitely known of the habitat 

 of Abies Fraseri till the publication of the article by Professor 

 Sargent in the " Garden and Forest" quoted above, from which the 

 following particulars are taken : 



" Abies Fraseri is found only on a few of the highest slopes of 

 the southern Appalachian mountains of Carolina and Tennessee between 

 4,000 and 6,000 feet elevation, so that next to A. bracteata it is by 

 far the most restricted in its distribution of the North American 

 Abies. The principal forest covers the high slopes of the Black 

 Mountain range, a lateral spur from the Blue Ridge near Ashville in 

 North Carolina." 



Abies Fraseri was first distributed from the Hammersmith nursery 

 of Messrs. Lee, shortly after Eraser's death in 1811, but it has now 

 become extremely rare in British Pineta. The tree is short-lived, and 

 the original introductions have probably long since disappeared ; moreover 

 seeds of a variety of A. balsamea with slightly exserted bracts collected 

 in Pennsylvania have been substituted for it, and plants raised from 

 these are occasionally met with in nursery and other gardens. Within 



