346 CONIFERAZ OF WHEELER'S EXPEDITION. 
few collectors. — Leaves linear-lanceolate, always acute, of very firm texture. The bract is scarcely longer than the 
somewhat rounded, glabrous (all the other firs have pubescent ones) scale, but its awn or midrib protrudes 1-14 inches ; 
wing of seed rounded 
8. A. NOBILIS (Pinus, Dougl. Comp. Bot. Mag. 2, 147, 1836 ; Parl. 1. c. 419), Lindl. Penn. Cye. 1, No. 5. Pseu- 
dotsuga nobilis, Bertrand, McNab, under Pinus: the red fir of the Cascades in Oregon, extending southward to the Shasta 
region of California ; stately trees, 200 feet high, with rigid, glaucous foliage ; thick, rough, cinnamon-brown bark, and 
useful timber. A section in the Oregon collection of the Centennial Exhibition was taken from a tree 2} feet in 
diameter, bark 1 inch thick, 119 annual rings of nearly even thickness throughout. The leaves of young trees and of 
the lower sterile branches of old trees are longer, flat and grooved, the resin-ducts lateral, and the fibro-vascular bundles 
more or less divided in two; those of the fully developed and especially the fertile branches are shorter, flat-quad- 
rangular, their thickness not more than $ or rarely 3 of the width ;® bundles single, cylindrical. Bracts more or less 
protruding and reflexed ; scale high in proportion to its width (7: 10); the oblique, angular wing of the seed about as 
wide as long, and us long as the slender seed ; the only good seed I could examine had 7 cotyledons. 
9. A. MAGNIFICA, Murray Proc. Hort. Soc. 3, 318, 1863. A. nobilis var. robusta in Hort. Dickson & Turnbull, 
A. campylocarpa, Murr. Trans. Bot. Soc. 6,370. A. amabilis of the Californian botanists. Pseudotsuga magnifica, McNab : 
the red fir of the higher California sierras, at an altitude of 7-10,000 feet ; large trees often 10 feet in diameter, over 
200 feet high, with thick cinnamon-brown bark, and valuable wood.7 Leaves of young specimens flat but scarcely 
ved, never, I believe, notched, the fibrous bundles often in twos. On full-grown trees, and oe on fertile 
ranches, the leaves are mostly } wider than thick, or even perfectly square ; the resin-ducts in these lea 
are placed equidistant from the edges and the keel, separated from the epidernis by a layer of hypoderm cl [602 (10)] 
which is externally indicated by a green stripe dividing the bands of stomata, so that these leaves show 4 low 
white bands. Cones 6-8 inches long, 24-3} thick, purple ; bracts lanceolate, shorter than the broad ait (height to 
width as 6: 10) ; wing of slender dud very oblique, wider than long ; the only seed examined had 10 cotyledons. 
Many years ago it was suggested by Mr. McNab of the Edinburgh garden, that nobilis and magnifica might be 
forms of the same species ; some seedsmen of California seem, also, to have come to this conclusion; and now Messrs. 
Hooker and Gray, who a few months ago enjoyed the opportunity of examining both on their native mountains, incline 
to the same opinion ; magnifica would thus be the southern, short-bracted, and nobilis the northern, long-bracted form. 
It is quite probable that the length of the bracts may vary ; we know it of nobilis, but it is doubtful whether this could 
be the case to such an extent as to permit us to unite both species. In magnifica no lengthening of the bracts has been 
observed thus far, and in nobilis they never, I believe, become shorter than the ieiake, But besides this, I confess, 
rather doubtful difference in the length of an organ of minor importance, the flatter and grooved leaves of the young 
nobilis, and the higher and proportionately narrower scales of this species, together with the smaller number of coty- 
ons (if constant), seem to indicate specific distinction. Further explorations must show whether magnifica, or any- 
thing like it, grows in the regions which we know as the home of nobilis, 
VI. CONIFERZ OF WHEELER’S EXPEDITION. 
From Report, GEoLocicaL Surveys, ETc., VoL. VI, Botany, sy J. T. Rorwrock, 1878, pp. 255-264. 
ABIES! suBALPINA, Engelm. Am. Nat. 1876, p. 554; Trans. Ac. St, Louis, 3,597. Abies grandis in part, [255] 
of the Rocky Mountain botanists. — A large tree, 60-80 feet high, with very pale and thin, smooth, or only in very 
old trees, cracked, and ashy-gray bark ; leaves 1 inch 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- 
6 The leaf sections, figured by McNab, all seem to refer by a twist near their bases, two-ranked, sessile, persistent 
to young trees ; none are as thick as I find them in native leaves, which eventually leave on the branches circular, flat 
specimens. scars ; rites ing from the axils of the leaves of the previous 
17 A section in the Agricultural Dep. a Cent. Exh., sent year ; staminate flowers fans ealied staminate aments) in 
by J. G. Lemmon, indicates a tree 64 feet in see with a form =p an oval or cylindrical ament ; anthers without 
brown, almost fibrous, bark, 3 inches the, about 400 years ts, bursting transversely with large (0. "11-0. 14™" in the 
—— sae . BS peetey uniform | growth, 10 0 rings — 1-2 sion diameter) 2-lobed pollen-grains ; cones erect on the 
of nobilis more or less horizontal tnechious. maturing in one season ; 
pees collection. their scales with their enclosed or exsert membranaceous 
1 Aptiss, Link, not Don ; Abies sect. (Firs), Gray's Man. ; bracts falling from the persistent axis ; seeds covered with 
Pinus sect. Abies, Endl. Parlat. ; ion. — Coniferous balsam-receptacles, and partially but permanently enclosed 
trees with more or less flattened, and on the sterile branchlets in the pergamentaceous base of the wing, which covers 
