AMERICAN FOREST TREES 165 



nearly three pounds less than Douglas fir. It is used for rough lumber, 

 packing boxes, bridge floors, interior house finish, and fuel. 



SHASTA RED FIR (Abies magnified shasiensis) is pronounced by 

 George B. Sud worth to be only a form of red fir (Abies magnified) and not 

 a separate species. The principal difference is in the cones. The Shasta 

 form was discovered on the mountain of that name in northern Cali- 

 fornia in 1890 by Professor J. G. Lemmon. It was supposed to be 

 confined to that locality, but was subsequently found on the Cascade 

 mountains in Oregon, and also at several points in northern California. 

 It was later found in the Sierras five hundred miles south of Mount 

 Shasta. 



LOVELY FIR (Abies amabilis) is known by a number of names, red fir, silver fir, 

 red silver fir, lovely red fir, amabilis fir, and larch. The last name is applied to this 

 tree by lumbermen who have discovered that fir lumber sells better if it is given some 

 other name. The range of this species extends from British Columbia southward in 

 the Cascade mountains through Washington to Oregon. It is the common fir of the 

 Olympic mountains and there reaches its best development, sometimes a height of 

 250 feet and a diameter of five or six; but the average, even in the best part of its 

 range, is much under that size, while in the northern country, and high on mountains, 

 it is a commonplace tree, averaging less than 100 feet high, and scarcely eighteen 

 inches in diameter. When this fir stands in open ground, the whole trunk is covered 

 with limbs from base to top; but in dense stands, the limbs drop off, and a clean trunk 

 results. 



Some of the largest trees rise with scarcely a limb 150 feet, and above that is the 

 small crown. The bark of young trees is covered with blisters filled with resin. The 

 bark is thin and smooth until the tree is a century or more old, after which it becomes 

 rougher, and near the base may be two and a half inches thick. It is of very slow 

 growth, and a century hardly produces a trunk of small sawlog size. The leaves are 

 dark green above, and whitish below. They are much crowded on the twigs, those 

 on the underside rising with a twist at the base, and standing nearly erect. They are 

 longer than those on the twig's upper side. The purple cones are conspicuous objects 

 on the tree, are from three and a half to six inches long, and bear abundance of seeds 

 which are well dispersed by wind. However, the reproduction of this tree is not 

 plentiful. The species holds its own, and not much more. When artificial reforesta- 

 tion takes place in this country, if that time ever comes, lovely fir will receive scant 

 consideration, because of its discouragingly slow growth. It ranks with lodgepole 

 pine in that respect. Nature can afford to wait two hundred years for a forest to 

 mature, but men will not plant and protect when the prospect of returns is so remote. 

 The wood is light, weak, moderately stiff and hard. The heartwood is pale brown, 

 the sap nearly white. The summerwood appears in thin but well-marked bands in 

 the annual rings, and the medullary rays are large enough to show slightly in quarter- 

 sawed lumber. Growing as it does, interspersed with really valuable woods, the 

 lovely fir is not highly thought of from a commercial standpoint. However, it is 

 exploited in conjunction with the other species and turned into lumber and general 

 structural material. A considerable quantity finds a market as interior finish and 

 other millwork. It has many of the properties which fit it for the manufacture of 

 packing boxes, particularly* those intended for dried fruit and light merchandise. It 

 bears considerable resemblance to spruce. The utilization of this and similar species 



