RED FIR 197 



BED FIR : Abies magnified 



THE name given this tree is eminently appropriate because 

 of the deep brown-red of its bark and the tinge of red in 

 its wood, while the botanical appellation magnifica, mag- 

 nificent, is well bestowed. The author first saw the tree 

 on the southern slope of Mount Shasta, and well remembers 

 the towering, stately form, with its red stem, and can well 

 understand why it is thought magnificent. There is another 

 variety of this tree known as Abies magnifica shastensis, 

 but the two are so nearly identical in every economic re- 

 spect that a separate description would be superfluous. The 

 range of the Red Fir is on mountain slopes and ridges, at 

 an elevation running from four thousand to eight thousand 

 feet above the sea, from southern Oregon and northern 

 California southward on the Sierras. 



It has been found reaching a height of one hundred and 

 seventy -five to two hundred feet, with a stem seven or eight 

 feet in diameter, and fully one half its length clean of 

 limbs, but such specimens are rare. When growing in favor- 

 able locations and in dense stands, it forms a slightly taper- 

 ing stem free of branches for seventy-five or eighty feet, 

 but generally running from twenty-four to thirty-six inches 

 in diameter. It is smallest on high elevations. It is slow- 

 growing and long-lived, 'frequently reaching an age of three 

 hundred and seventy-five years. When growing in the open, 

 it retains its limbs from near the ground up. The bark in 

 old trees is from two to three inches thick and deeply fur- 

 rowed. 



The wood is the heaviest of any of the Firs. It is soft, not 

 strong, comparatively durable, light brown tinged with red, 

 with thick and somewhat darker sapwood. It is firm and 

 can be easily worked, but thus far has been mainly used for 

 fuel, packing-boxes, and cheap construction. There is no 

 apparent reason why it may not be far more generally used 

 than now. 



