50 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



brown and pubescent during their first year, becoming glabrous and dark or light orange- 

 brown and ultimately gray-brown. Winter buds ovoid, acute, usually not more than ' 

 long, often nearly as broad as long. Bark 3'-6' thick, dark reddish brown, deeply divided 

 into broad rounded ridges covered with thick closely appressed scales. Wood heavy, 

 hard, strong, close-grained, not durable; occasionally manufactured into lumber; largely 

 used for fuel. 



Distribution. Steep rocky mountain slopes in southern California at elevations of 

 3000-5000 above the sea, often forming open groves of considerable extent, from the 

 Santa Inez Mountains in Santa Barbara County to the Cuyamaca Mountains. 



6. ABIES Link. Fir. 



Tall pyramidal trees, with bark containing numerous resin-vesicles, smooth, pale, and 

 thin on young trees, often thick and deeply furrowed in old age, pale and usually brittle 

 wood, slender horizontal wide-spreading branches in regular remote 4 or 5-branched whorls, 

 clothed with twice or thrice forked lateral branches forming flat-topped masses of foliage 

 gradually narrowed from the base to the apex of the branch, the ultimate divisions stout, 

 glabrous or pubescent, and small subglobose or ovoid winter branch-buds usually thickly 

 covered with resin, or in one species large and acute, with thin loosely imbricated scales. 

 Leaves linear, sessile, on young plants and on lower sterile branches flattened and mostly 

 grooved on the upper side, or in one species 4-sided, rounded and usually emarginate at 

 apex, appearing 2-ranked by a twist near their base or occasionally spreading from all sides 

 of the branch, only rarely stomatiferous above, on upper fertile branches and leading 

 shoots usually crowded, more or less erect, often incurved or falcate, thick, convex on the 

 upper side, or quadrangular in some species and then obtuse, or acute at apex and fre- 

 quently stomatiferous on all sides; persistent usually for eight or ten years, in falling 

 leaving small circular scars. Flowers axillary, from buds formed the previous season on 

 branchlets of the year, surrounded at the base by conspicuous involucres of enlarged bud- 

 scales, the male very abundant on the lower side of branches above the middle of the tree, 

 oval or oblong-cylindric with yellow or scarlet anthers surmounted by short knob-like pro- 

 jections, the female usually on the upper side only of the topmost branches, or in some 

 species scattered also over the upper half of the tree, erect, globose, ovoid or oblong, their 

 scales imbricated in many series, obovate, rounded above, cuneate below, much shorter 

 than their acute or dilated mucronate bracts. Fruit an erect ovoid or oblong-cylindric 

 cone, its scales closely imbricated, thin, incurved at the broad apex and generally narrowed 

 below into long stipes, decreasing in size and sterile toward the ends of the cone, falling at 

 maturity with their bracts and seeds from the stout tapering axis of the cone long-per- 

 sistent on the branch. Seeds furnished with large conspicuous resin-vesicles, ovoid or 

 oblong, acute at base, covered on the upper side and infolded below on the lower side 

 by the base of their thin wing abruptly enlarged at the oblique apex; seed-coat thin, of 

 2 layers, the outer thick, coriaceous, the inner membranaceous; cotyledons 4-10, much 

 shorter than the inferior radicle. 



Abies is widely distributed in the New World from Labrador and the valley of the Atha- 

 basca River to the mountains of North Carolina, and from Alaska through the Pacific and 

 Rocky Mountain regions to the highlands of Guatemala, and in the Old World from Si- 

 beria and the mountains of central Europe to southern Japan, central China, Formosa, 

 the Himalayas, Asia Minor, and the highlands of northern Africa. Thirty-three species 

 are now recognized. Several exotic species are cultivated in the northern and eastern 

 states; of these the best known and most successful as ornamental trees are Abies Nord- 

 manniana, Spach, of the Caucasus, Abies cilicica Carr., of Asia Minor, Abies cepkalonica 

 Loud., a native of Cephalonia, Abies Veitchii Lindl., and Abies homolepis S. & Z., of 

 Japan, and Abies pinsapo, Boiss., of the Spanish Sierra Nevada. 



Abies is the classical name of the Fir-tree. 



