CONIFERS 59 



with scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, coarse-grained, perishable, pale brown 

 streaked with yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood; occasionally made into 

 lumber principally used for packing-cases. From the bark of this tree oil of fir used 

 in the arts and in medicine is obtained. 



Distribution. From the interior of the Labrador peninsula northwestward to the 

 shores of the Lesser Slave Lake, southward through Newfoundland, the maritime 

 provinces of Canada, Quebec and Ontario, northern New England, northern New 

 York, northern Michigan and Minnesota to northern and central Iowa; and along 

 the Appalachian Mountains from western Massachusetts and the Catskills of New 

 York to the high mountains of southwestern Virginia; common and often forming 

 a considerable part of the forest on low swampy ground ; on well-drained hillsides 

 sometimes singly in forests of spruce or forming small almost impenetrable thickets; 

 near the timber-line on the mountains of New England and New York reduced to a 

 low almost prostrate shrub. 



Often planted in the northern states in the neighborhood of farmhouses, but 

 usually short-lived and of little value as an ornamental tree in cultivation; formerly 

 but now rarely cultivated in European plantations. 



3. Abies amabilis, Forbes. White Fir. 



Leaves deeply grooved, very dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, sil- 

 very white on the lower, with broad bands of 6 or 8 rows of stomata between the 

 prominent midribs and recurved margins, on sterile branches obtuse and rounded, 

 or notched or occasionally acute at the apex, f'-l^' long, fa -^ wide, often broadest 

 above the middle, erect by a twist at their base, very crowded, those on the upper 

 side of the branch much shorter than those on the lower and usually parallel with 



and closely appressed against it, on fertile branches acute or acuminate, with callous 

 tips, occasionally stomatiferous on the upper surface near the apex, ^'-f ' long, on 

 vigorous leading shoots acute, with long rigid points, closely appressed or recurved 

 near the middle, about \' long and nearly \' wide. Flowers: staminate red; pistil- 

 late with broad rounded scales and rhombic dark purple lustrous bracts erose above 

 the middle and gradually contracted into broad points. Fruit oblong, slightly nar- 

 rowed to the rounded and often retuse apex, deep rich purple, puberulous, 3'-6' 

 long, with scales I'-l^' wide, nearly as long as broad, gradually narrowed from the 

 rounded apex and rather more than twice as long as their reddish rhombic or oblong- 



