60 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



obovate bracts terminating in long slender tips; seeds light yellow-brown, ^' long, 

 with oblique pale brown lustrous wings about -|' long. 



A tree, often 250 tall, or at high altitudes and in the north usually not more than 

 70-80 tall, with a trunk 4-6 in diameter, in thick forests often naked for 150, 

 but in open situations densely clothed to the ground with comparatively short 

 branches sweeping down in graceful curves, and stout branchlets clothed for four or 

 five years with soft fine pubescence, light orange-brown in their first season, becom- 

 ing dark purple and ultimately reddish brown. Winter-buds nearly globose, \'-^ 

 thick, with closely imbricated lustrous purple scales. Bark on trees up to 150 years 

 old thin, smooth, pale or silvery white, becoming near the ground on old trees !'- 

 2^' thick, and irregularly divided into comparatively small plates covered with 

 small closely appressed reddish brown or reddish gray scales. Wood light, hard, 

 not strong, close-grained, pale brown, with nearly white sapwood ; in -Washington 

 occasionally manufactured into lumber used in the interior finish of buildings. 



Distribution. High mountain slopes and benches from British Columbia south- 

 ward along the Cascade Mountains to northern Oregon, and on the coast ranges of 

 Oregon and Washington ; attaining its largest size on the Olympic Mountains, where 

 it is the most common Fir-tree. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in western Europe, but without de- 

 veloping there the beauty which distinguishes this species in its native forests. 



-H i- Cones green. 



4. Abies grandis, Lindl. White Fir. 



Leaves thin and flexible, deeply grooved, very dark green and lustrous on the 

 upper surface, silvery white on the lower surface, with two broad bands of 7-10 



rows of stomata, on sterile branches remote, rounded and conspicuously emarginate 

 at the apex, l'-2^' long, usually about \' wide, spreading in two ranks nearly at 

 right angles to the branch, on cone-bearing branches more crowded, usually I'-l^' 

 long, less spreading or nearly erect, blunt-pointed or often notched at the apex, on 

 vigorous young trees '- f' long, acute or acuminate. Flowers: staminate pale yel- 

 low sometimes tinged with purple; pistillate light yellow-green, with semiorbicular 



