CATALOGUE. | 255 
CONIFER. 
By Dr. GEORGE ENGELMANN. 
Axsies* suBaLpina, Engelm. Am. Nat. 1876, p. 554; Trans. Ac. St. 
* Louis, 3, 597; Abies grandis in part, of the Rocky Mountain botanists — 
A large tree, 60-80° high, with very pale and thin, smooth, or, only in very 
old trees, cracked, and ashy-gray bark; leaves #-1’ long, dark green above, 
paler or whitish underneath, on the lower branches flat, grooved above, 
notched at tip and distichous, those of fertile or of erect shoots all around 
the axis, sharp-pointed and convex and often with stomata above; cones 
cylindrical-oblong, retuse, 245-3’ or 34’ long, 1-14’ thick, of purplish-brown 
color; bracts broadly oval, denticulate, mucronate, much shorter than the 
nearly orbicular or sometimes somewhat quadrangular scale; purplish | 
wings of seeds nearly twice longer than wide; cotyledons 4—5. 
Colorado to Utah on the higher mountains and near to the timber- 
line; extending north and northwestwardly. A poor, soft, almost spongy 
timber, with paler bark than any other American species. The resin ducts 
of the leaves are imbedded in the parenchyma, about equidistant from the 
upper and the lower surface. 
Axsres concotor, Lindley; Engelm. Trans. /. c. 600.—A large tree, 
80-150° high, with ash-colored, at last thick and much cracked bark, with 
longer and broader leaves than the last (in young trees often 2-3’ long, 
shorter in old ones), 2-ranked, and when young glaucous, later pale dull 
green, with stomata on both sides; leaves on the upper branches obtuse, 
convex above, often faleate; cones cylindrical-oblong, obtuse, 3-4’ or 
even 5’ long, 14-1?’ thick, mostly apple-green, sometimes purplish-gray ; 
bracts orbicular-ovate, mostly mucronate, much shorter than the very 
* Apres, Link, not Don; Abies sect. (Firs), Gray’s Man.; Pinus sect. Abies, Endl. Parlat.; Picea, 
Don.—Coniferous trees with more or less flattened, and on the sterile branchlets, by a twist near their 
two-ranked, sessile, persistent leaves, which eventually leave on the branches circular, flat scars; 
flowering from the axils of the leaves of the previous year; staminate flowers (usually called staminate 
aments) in the form of an oval or cylindrical ament ; anthers without crests, bursting transversely with 
large (0.11-0.14™™ in the larger diameter) 2-lobed pollen-grains; cones erect on the more or less hori- 
zontal brancblets, maturing in one season; their scales with their enclosed or exsert membranaceous 
bracts falling from the persistent axis; seeds covered with balsam-receptacles, and partially but per- 
manently enclosed in the pergamentaccous base of the wing, which covers the outer and laps over the 
inner surface.—Stately trees of rapid growth, but with brittle and rapidly decaying wood. 
