804 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Staminate flowers yellow, tinged with purple. Pistillate flowers with nearly 

 orbicular purple scales, shorter than the serrulate greenish-yellow bracts, which are 

 emarginate above and end in long, recurved tips. 



Cones sub-sessile, ovoid-cylindrical, tapering both at the base and towards the 

 round or flattened apex ; purple ' in colour, 2 to 4 inches long, about an inch in 

 diameter. Scales, about f inch wide and long ; lamina fan-shaped, rounded and 

 undulate above, lateral margins denticulate and curving to the truncate or auricled 

 base ; claw wedge-shaped. Bracts variable in length, exserted or concealed between 

 the scales ; claw oblong ; lamina trapezoidal and denticulate, ending in a mucro. 

 Seeds purplish, about ^ inch long ; wing about as long as the body of the seed. 



In the wild state considerable variation occurs in the habit of the tree, which 

 becomes a mere shrub at high altitudes. The cones vary both in size and in the 

 length of the bracts, which are either slightly exserted, or quite concealed between 

 the scales. Prof. Balfour found on the same tree at Keillour cones both with long 

 and with short bracts. 



Var. Hudsonia, Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. 597 (1878). 

 Abies Hudsonia, Bosc. ex Carriere, Conif. i. 200 (1855), 



According to Engelmann this is a sterile dwarf form which occurs above the 

 timber line on the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Whether this is 

 identical with the A. Hudsonia, which occurs in cultivation, is uncertain. 

 The latter, according to Sargent, 2 is of unknown origin, but is probably, though 

 it has never produced cones, a depauperate form of A. balsamea. It has densely 

 crowded branches, short numerous branchlets, and small broad leaves, about \ inch 

 in length ; and is a dwarf spreading shrub, only a foot or two in height. It differs 

 from A. balsamea in having marginal resin-canals. 



Var. macrocarpa? This was discovered near the Wolf River, Wisconsin, and 

 raised by Robert Douglas at Waukegan nursery ; it is said to be a distinct and 

 beautiful form with longer leaves and larger cones than the type. 



Distribution 



The balsam fir extends far to the northward in the Dominion of Canada, its 

 northerly limit being a line drawn from the interior of Labrador north-westward to 

 the shores of the Lesser Slave Lake. It occurs in Newfoundland and in the 

 provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and descends in the United States in the west 

 through northern Michigan and Minnesota to northern and central Iowa, and in 

 the east extends through New England and New York, along the Catskill and 

 Alleghany mountains to south-western Virginia. It is common and often forms a 

 considerable part of the forest on low swampy ground, while on well-drained hill-sides 

 it is met with as single trees or small groves chiefly in the spruce forests. It ascends 

 to 5000 feet on the Adirondacks. (A. H.) 



1 In cultivated specimens the cones are occasionally olive-green in colour, and rarely exceed 2 inches in length. 

 2 Garden and Forest, x. 510 (1897). => Ibid. v. 274 (1892) and x. 510 (1897). 



