62 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



A tree, usually 80-100, occasionally 175 high, with a trunk 2-5 in diame- 

 ter, short crowded tough branches, usually slightly pendulous near the base of the 



tree, generally clothing the trunks of the oldest trees nearly to their base and form- 

 ing dense spire-like slender heads, and comparatively stout branchlets coated for three 

 or four years with fine rufous pubescence, or rarely glabrous before the end of their 

 first season, pale orange-brown, ultimately gray or silvery white. Winter-buds 

 subglobose, \'-\' thick, covered with light orange-brown scales. Bark becoming on 

 old trees f'-l^' thick, divided by shallow fissures and roughened by thick closely 

 appressed cinnamon-red scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, pale brown or nearly 

 white, with light-colored sapwood; little used except for fuel. 



Distribution. High mountain slopes and summits from about latitude 61 in 

 Alaska, southward along the coast ranges to the Olympic Mountains of Washington, 

 over all the high mountain ranges of British Columbia and Alberta, and southward 

 along the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon, over the mountain ranges 

 of eastern Washington and Oregon, and of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah 

 to the San Francisco peaks of northern Arizona. 



Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree in the northern United States and in 

 northern Europe. 



-K Cones yellow, green, or purple. 



6. Abies concolor, Lindl. & Gord. White Fir. 



Leaves crowded, spreading in 2 ranks and more or less erect from the strong 

 twist at their base, pale blue or glaucous, becoming dull green at the end of two or 

 three years, with 2 broad bands of stomata on the lower, and more or less stoma- 

 tiferous on the upper surface, on lower branches flat, straight, rounded, acute or 

 acuminate at the apex, 2'-3' long, about ^' wide, on fertile branches and on old 

 trees frequently thick, keeled above, usually falcate, acute or rarely notched at 

 the apex, -f'-l^' long, often \' wide. Flowers: staminate dark red or rose color; 

 pistillate with broad rounded scales, and oblong strongly reflexed obcordate bracts 

 laciniate above the middle and abruptly contracted at the apex into short points. 

 Fruit oblong, slightly narrowed from near the middle to the ends, rounded or obtuse 

 at the apex, 3'-5' long, puberulous, grayish green, dark purple or bright canary- 

 yellow, with scales much broader than long, gradually and regularly narrowed from 



