Abies 



759 



distinguished by its ashy-grey smooth shoots which are minutely pubescent, and its 

 small globose resinous buds. It can only be confused with A. sachalinensis, which 

 has shoots with prominent pulvini, and leaves with broader and whiter bands of 

 stomata below. A. lasiocarpa, which has, like this species, median resin-canals, is 

 distinguished by the peculiar arrangement of the leaves, which have conspicuous 

 lines of stomata on their upper surface. 



Distribution and Cultivation 



This species is the most widely distributed of all the silver firs, occupying large 

 areas of both the plains and mountains of north-eastern Russia and Siberia. In 

 European Russia it forms forests in company with spruce and larch, or rarely with 

 birch and aspen ; and occurs through the governments of Archangel, Vologda, 

 Kostroma, Perm, Ufa, Kazan, and Orenburg. On the mountains it does not go as 

 high as the timber line, and does not extend so far south in European Russia as the 

 spruce. It is common in the Ural range, and attains perhaps its maximum develop- 

 ment in the Altai, 1 where it forms vast forests between 2000 and 4500 feet elevation. 

 In Turkestan it is found in the Thianshan mountains, and is reported by Korshinsky 

 to form forests at low altitudes in the province of Ferghana, where it grows in 

 mixture with Picea Schrenkiana. Its distribution in Siberia is not clearly known, 

 but it appears to be widely spread from west to east, its northern limit on the 

 Yenisei being 66 lat. and on the Lena 6o lat. It occurs on the high lands of 

 Dahuria, and, according to Komarov, reaches its most easterly point in the Yablonoi 

 mountains, being replaced in Kamtschatka, by A. gracilis, Komarov ; and on the 

 borders of the sea of Okhotsk and in Manchuria by A. nephrolepis, Maximowicz. 



According to Loudon this species was introduced from the Altai into England 

 in 1820. It is very rare in cultivation, and does not grow for any length of time in 

 the south of England, where the climate is unsuitable to it. Even at Durris, 

 Mr. Crozier describes it as " a slow-growing, many-headed, and evidently short- 

 lived tree." There is an unhealthy specimen, about 15 feet high, at Ochtertyre in 

 Perthshire. At Pampisford, Cambridgeshire, there is a small tree, 30 feet high 

 by 13 inches in girth in 1907, narrowly pyramidal in habit, with the lower branches 

 layering and producing five independent stems about six feet in height. This tree 

 has been badly damaged by the snowstorm of April 1908. Another at Bicton 

 measured 28 feet by 1 foot 8 inches in 1908. 



In August 1908 I saw a fine specimen in the University Botanic Garden, 

 Upsala, Sweden, which was 70 feet high and 1 foot in diameter, forming a very 

 narrow pyramid, closely resembling the habit of A. Pindrow. Hansen 2 says that 

 specimens, forty years old, have attained a height of about 40 feet in Denmark ; and 

 that there are beautiful examples in the Botanic Gardens at Helsingfors, Finland 

 (lat. 60), where many seedlings have sprung up around the old trees. (A. H.) 



1 I saw this tree in the forests on the north slopes of the Altai, where the climate was damp, but it did not strike me as a 

 fine or large tree, and was not seen in the drier valleys towards Mongolia. (H. J. E. ) 



2 fount. Roy. Hort. Soc. xiv. 477 (1892). 



