722 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Var. pendula? with weeping branches, has been found in the Vosges and in 

 East Friesland. 



Var. virgata? found in Alsace and Bohemia, has long pendulous branches, only 

 giving off branchlets near their apices, and densely covered with leaves. 



Var. Pyramidalis? This form, which in habit resembles the cypress or a 

 Lombardy poplar, was found growing wild in the department of Isere in France. A 

 very fine example, about 35 feet high in 1904, is growing in the arboretum of 

 Segrez. 



Var. columnaris* very slender in habit, with numerous short branches, all of 

 equal length, and with leaves shorter and broader than in the type. 



Var. tortuosa, a dwarf form, with twisted branches, and bent, irregularly-arranged 

 leaves. 



Var. brevifolia, another dwarf form, distinguished by its short broad leaves. 



Remarkable variations in the cones have also been observed. A tree, discovered 

 by Purkyne 5 in Bohemia, bore cones, umbonate at the apex, and with short and non- 

 reflexed bracts. Beissner 6 mentions a tree, growing in the park at Worlitz near 

 Dessau, which produced cones a foot in length. 



Distribution 



The common silver fir is a native of the mountainous regions of central and 

 southern Europe. The northern limit of its area of distribution begins in the 

 western Pyrenees about lat. 43 in the neighbourhood of Roncesvalles in Navarre ; 

 and crossing the chain it extends along its northern slope as far as St. Beat ; from 

 here it bends northwards to the mountains of Auvergne, whence it is continued in a 

 north-easterly direction through Burgundy and French Lorraine, crossing the eastern 

 slope of the Vosges about the latitude of Strasburg. From here it curves for some 

 distance westward, and reaching Luxemburg, is continued through Trier and Bonn 

 to southern Westphalia. Across the rest of Germany, according to Drude, who 

 gives a map of the distribution of the species, the northern limit extends as an 

 irregular line about lat. 51, which touches Hersfeld, Eisenach, the northern edge of 

 the Thuringian forest, Glauchau, Rochlitz, Dresden, Bautzen, and Gorlitz ; and ends 

 in the southern point of the province of Posen. Around Spremberg to the north 

 of the limit just traced, it is found wild in a small isolated territory. 



The eastern limit, beginning in Posen, extends through Poland along the River 

 Wartha to Kolo, crosses to Warsaw, and descending through Galicia west of 

 Lemberg, reaches the Carpathians in Bukowina ; and is continued along the 

 mountains of Transylvania to Orsova on the Danube. 



The southern limit is not clearly known as regards the Balkan peninsula, as 

 the silver fir, which occurs in the mountains of Roumelia, Macedonia, and Thrace, 



1 Kottmeier found peculiar weeping silver firs in the Friedeberg forest, near Wittmund in East Friesland, in 1882. 

 Cf. Wittmack's Gartemeitung, 1882, p. 406, and Conwentz, Seltene Waldbdume in Wcstpreusscn, 161 (1895). 



2 Caspary, in Hempel's Oesterr. Forstzcitung, 1883, p. 43. 



3 Carriere, Conif. 280. 4 Carriere, Rev. Hort. 1859, p. 39. 

 6 Willkomm, Forstliche Flora, 118 (1887). Nadelholzkunde, 433 (189 1). 



