6oO TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



ther exploration of the Cascade Mountains between the Columbia River 

 and Shasta, probably the least known mountain region of the Pacific coast, 

 will, it is hoped, clear up these doubts. 



5. A. CONCOLOR {Pt'nus, Engelm. in Herb. 1848; Parlat. 1. c. 426) Lindl. 

 Mss. in Gordon Pin. 155, 1858. Long known only from Fendler's New 

 Mexican specimens No. 828, coll. 1847, this elegant species now proves to 

 be wide-spread over the southern Rocky Mountains, from Pike's Peak in 

 Colorado, where it occurs only in the valleys of the foothills, to the higher 

 mountains of New Mexico, the southern parts of Utah, and the northern 

 of Arizona, and throughout the Californian sierras, at an elevation of 

 3-7,000 feet, to Mount Shasta ; whether in the southern Cascades, is not 

 known. It is A. Lowtana Gord. suppl. 53 ; A. grandis of the Californian 

 botanists; A. lasiocarpa of the nurseries (so called from its long leaves, 

 which constitute a character of the original lasiocarpa) ; A. amabilis of 

 some establishments (because of the large cones and obtuse leaves) ; A. 

 Parsoniana of the gardens. It is a stately tree, in California up to 150 feet 

 high, 3-5 feet in diameter, and 200-300 years old (Lemmon) ; in the Rocky 

 Mountains not quite so large. — The bark is pale in young trees, but darker 

 than in subalpina, and soon becomes rough and of an ash-gray color, in 

 old trees often several inches thick and deeply fissured. The wood is 

 more valuable than that of subalpina, perhaps equal to that of grandis^ 

 but much less so than the wood of magnifica. The tree is always readily 

 distinguished by its pale glaucous foliage, which at last gets dull greeuj 

 and by the length of the leaves of the young trees, 2-2^ and sometimes 

 even 3 inches long — longer than in any other of our firs. Only such leaves 

 or those of the lower branches of old trees are notched at the end; on the 

 older trees they are shorter, very broad, convex above, usually falcate, and 

 always obtuse ; on the flowering branches they become often quite thick, 

 keeled above, and almost quadrangular. On older trees stomata cover the 

 upper surface ; in young ones they are usually confined to the middle line 

 of the leaf, but are never absent. Hypoderm cells are interruptedly dis- 

 tributed over the upper surface. Cones oblong, 2-4 or even 5 inches long, 

 retuse, or in some trees short-pointed; usually apple-green before full ma. 

 turity, but, at least in Colorado, varying to different shades of brown or 

 purple.* The scales are very broad in proportion; the bracts short, 

 rounded, or truncate, or sometimes emarginate, with, or rarely without a 

 short mucro; wing of seed broad, as wide as it is long; cotyledons 5-7, 

 usually 6. 



6. A. RELiGioSA {Pitms H. B. K. n. gen. sp. 2, 5, 1817; Pari. 1. c. 420) 

 Schlecht. Linn;ea 5, 77, 1830. — On the higher lands in Mexico, extending 

 to Guatemala. A tall tree with linear, acute, or rarely obtuse, dark, glossy 

 leaves; cones oval-oblong, 3-5 inches long, 1^-2 thick; bracts more or less 



* The color of the cones is often considered as of specific value, but in the Bhick Forest 

 of Germany all the shades between light green and deep purple maybe seen on the cones of 

 A, pectinata, just as in our concolor in Colorado. 



