Abies 783 



extending from 1200 feet up to timber line at about 4500 feet, and forming, with the 

 Western Hemlock, a large part of the forest between 3000 and 4000 feet. In the 

 Cascade Mountains it extends south to about 20 miles north of Crater Lake where 

 Mr. Coville found it on the east side of Diamond Mountain. It occurs 1 in the 

 extreme south-eastern end of Alaska, at the Boca de Quatre inlet, ranging from 

 sea-level to 1000 feet altitude ; but has not yet been found between this point and the 

 northern end of Vancouver Island. It is the common fir 2 in south-western Vancouver 

 Island, where it grows abundantly from sea-level up to the summits of the highest 

 mountains. Near the sea it often forms groves of almost pure growth, the trees 

 standing close together and having very tall slender trunks, about 3 feet in diameter 

 at the base, and often unbranched to a height of 100 feet or more. At an altitude 

 of 3000 feet it is a comparatively small tree, often clothed with branches to the 

 base. Plate 220, taken from a photograph, for which I am indebted to Mr. J. M. 

 Macoun of the Geological Survey of Canada, shows the tree as growing near 

 Kamloops, in British Columbia. 



Sargent says, "unsurpassed among fir trees in the beauty of its snowy bark, 

 dark green lustrous foliage, and great purple cones, Abies amabilis can never be 

 forgotten by those who have seen it in the alpine meadows covered with lilies, 

 dog's-tooth violets, heaths, and other flowers which make the valleys of the northern 

 Cascade Mountains the most charming natural gardens of the continent. " 



Engelmann in a letter, dated " Portland, Or., August 6," 1880, and quoted in 

 Gardeners Chronicle of December 4, 1880, says of it : "A. amabilis, on the same 

 mountain where Douglas discovered it, just south of the Cascades of the Columbia, is 

 a magnificent tree, at about 4000 feet, attaining 150 to 200 feet high with a trunk 

 4 feet in diameter, branching to the ground and forming a perfect cone. The bark 

 of old trees is i to 2 inches thick, furrowed and reddish grey, that of younger trees, 

 less than 100 years, is quite thin and smooth, light grey or almost white. It is 

 certainly very closely allied to A. grandis, but readily distinguished by its very 

 crowded dark green foliage and its large dark purple cones. It has the purple 

 cones and sharp-pointed leaves (on fertile branches) of A. subalpina, but this latter 

 has much smaller cones, and not such crowded leaves." 



Though I saw this tree in abundance on Mount Rainier I cannot say that I 

 know how to distinguish it in the forest from A. nobilis without the leaves and 

 cones. It has, according to Plummer, a wider range of elevation than that species, 

 and grows from 800 up to 5500 feet. The cone is as large as that of A. nobilis, 

 but without the projecting bracts. From A. lasiocarpa, 3 with which it was mixed 

 in the upper part of its range, it is distinguished by its habit, which is much 

 less slender and spiry, by its greater size, and by its cones, which are nearly 

 twice as large. Plummer says that it attains 200 feet in height by 15 feet in girth, 

 but I saw none so large as this that I could identify. It is a slow-growing tree, one 

 20 inches in diameter having 288 rings. 



1 U.S. Forest Service, Sylvical Leaflet, 22, p. 1 (1908). Its most southerly point in the coast range is Saddle Mountain, 

 25 miles south of the mouth of the Columbia River. 



2 Cf. Butters, Conifers of Vancouver Island, in Postelsia, 187 (St. Paul, Minn., 1906). 



3 Sargent, Silva, xii. 126, adtust., mentions the occurrence in a wild state of a hybrid between these two species. 



