66 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



branches, short stout remote lateral branches standing out at right angles, and slender 

 reddish brown branchlets puberulous for four or five years and generally pointing 

 forward. Winter-buds ovoid-oblong, red-brown, about \' long. Bark becoming 

 on old trunks l'-2' thick, bright red-brown, and deeply divided into broad flat ridges 

 irregularly broken by cross fissures and covered with thick closely appressed 

 scales. Wood light, hard, strong, rather close-grained, pale brown streaked with 

 red, with darker colored sapwood; occasionally manufactured into lumber and used 

 under the name of larch for the interior finish of buildings and for packing-cases. 



Distribution. Often forming extensive forests on the Cascade Mountains of Wash- 

 ington, ranging southward to the valley of the Mackenzie River, Oregon; coast moun- 

 tains of Washington to the Siskiyou Mountains, California; most abundant on the 

 western slopes of the Cascade Range in Washington and northern Oregon at eleva- 

 tions of 2500 to 5000 above the sea; less abundant and of smaller size on the 

 eastern and northern slopes of these mountains. 



Often planted in western and central Europe as an ornamental tree, and in the 

 eastern states hardy in sheltered positions as far north as Massachusetts. 



9. Abies magnifica, A. Murr. Red Fir. 



Leaves almost equally 4-sided, ribbed above and below, with 6-8 rows of 

 stomata on each of the 4 Sides, pale and very glaucous during their first season, later 



becoming blue-green, persistent usually for about ten years; on young plants and 

 lower branches oblanceolate, somewhat flattened, rounded, bluntly pointed, f'-l^' 

 long, ^j' wide, those on the lower side of the branch spreading in 2 nearly horizon- 

 tal ranks by the twist at their base, on upper, especially on fertile branches, much 

 thickened, with more prominent midribs, acute, with short callous tips, ^' long on 

 the upper side of the branch to \\' long on the lower side, crowded, erect, strongly 

 incurved, completely hiding the upper side of the branch, on leading shoots f long, 

 erect and acuminate, with long rigid points pressed against the stem. Flowers: 

 staminate dark reddish purple; pistillate with rounded scales much shorter than 

 their oblong pale green bracts terminating in elongated slender tips more or less 

 tinged with red. Fruit oblong-cylindrical, slightly narrowed to the rounded truncate 

 or retuse apex, dark purplish brown, puberulous, from 6'-9' long, with scales often 

 1^' wide and about two thirds as wide as long, gradually narrowed to the cordate base, 



