5io 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 514. 



central axis of the cone. Abies, which is usually found on 

 the slopes of high mountains, is represented in North 

 America by ten species, seven of them belonging to the 

 flora of the Pacific states and one to Mexico ; it is common 

 in Japan with several species, and is widely scattered over 

 Siberia, the Himalayas, Asia Minor, central and southern 

 Europe and northern Africa. The Silver Firs are pyramidal 

 trees with small branches arranged in regular whorls and 

 usually thin bark filled with large conspicuous resin vesi- 

 cles ; some of the species grow to a very large size, espe- 

 cially those of western America, and others are valuable 

 timber-trees. No genus of conifers probably has contributed 

 more to the beauty of gardens, for nearly all Fir-trees are 

 extremely handsome while young. Their tendency, how- 

 ever, to become thin and lose their lower branches early 

 when they are taken from cool mountain slopes makes the 

 first thirty or forty years of the lives of these trees the most 

 attractive period of their garden career. 



The species which grows in the swamps and on the 

 mountains of the north-eastern part of this continent from 

 Labrador and the shores of Hudson's Bay southward to the 

 high mountain peaks of Virginia, the so-called Balsam or 

 Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea), is a beautiful tree while it is 

 small, with lustrous foliage and dark purple cones. Its 

 beauty, however, is short-lived in cultivation, and the tall, 

 narrow, scrawny Balsams still so common in the neighbor- 

 hood of New England farmhouses show how worthless it 

 is for any scheme of permanent decoration. The dwarf 

 spreading Silver Fir, only a foot or two high, frequently 

 cultivated under the name of Abies Hudsonica, although it 

 has not produced cones and nothing is known of its origin, 

 is probably a depauperate form of Abies balsamea. Beiss- 

 ner describes a number of other seminal varieties of this 

 tree which are grown in Europe, but I have never seen any 

 of them. A seedling form sent several years ago to the 

 Arnold Arboretum by Robert Douglas is distinct in its 

 broader and more crowded leaves. 



The second eastern American Silver Fir, Abies Fraseri, a 

 small tree found only on the highest slopes of the southern 

 Appalachian Mountains, will probably not be of more per- 

 manent value here as an ornamental tree than the northern 

 Balsam, from which it chiefly differs in the long exserted 

 recurved bracts of the cone-scales. The southern tree 

 appears to have been common in European collections 

 about the beginning of the century, and then probably en- 

 tirely disappeared from gardens, as for many years seeds 

 of Abies balsamea were sold for those of Abies Fraseri, and 

 most of the plants now cultivated under that name are cer- 

 tainly wrongly named. For nearly twenty years, however, 

 Abies Fraseri has been growing in the Arnold Arboretum, 

 where it is perfectly hardy, produces cones and is still 

 good-looking. 



Of the Silver Firs of western America the most valuable 

 here as a garden plant is Abies concolor, the White Fir of 

 the southern Rocky Mountains, of the California Sierras, of 

 the Pacific coast ranges, of many of the interior moun- 

 tains of the south-western states and of northern Mexico. 

 No other Abies flourishes in such hot, dry regions or has 

 been able to sustain itself among such climatic hardships ; 

 and it is not surprising that a tree, which is equally at home 

 in the sea-fogs which sweep in from the Pacific over the 

 California coast ranges as it is on the mountains of Lower 

 California, southern Arizona and central Colorado, should 

 find little to fear from the cold blasts and hot summers of 

 New England. Both the California form, with its rather 

 shorter and greener leaves, which in England is still called 

 Abies Lowiana, and in this country sometimes Abies Par- 

 sonsii, and the handsomer Colorado form with longer blue 

 leaves, are perfectly hardy in New England. The oldest 

 specimens here of the California tree are already becoming 

 somewhat thin and are beginning to lose their lower 

 branches, and so have passed the period of greatest beauty. 

 The largest of the Colorado plants, however, in eastern 

 gardens, which are now probably twenty-five feet in height, 

 are still perfect in habit and density of foliage, surpassing 



in vigor and in loveliness of form and color all the Abies 

 hardy in New England, and are still as full of promise 

 as trees of the same age in sheltered ravines of the Rocky 

 Mountains. However ugly and unsatisfactory old trees of 

 this Fir may become here later, it deserves a place in every 

 garden for the beauty of its early years. 



None of the other western American Abies promise to 

 be of much value to us here in the east. Abies lasiocarpa 

 (A. subalpina of Engelmann), which is the most widely 

 distributed of the North American species, ranging as it 

 does from Alaska southward over all the high interior 

 mountain systems to northern Arizona, has been cul- 

 tivated for many years in the Arboretum, where it is 

 perfectly hardy, but grows very slowly, forming here broad 

 compact pyramids of pale blue-green foliage. A tree of the 

 north and of high mountains, where it grows up to the 

 timber-line, Abies lasiocarpa will probably never attain at 

 the sea-level a large size or show the narrow spire-like 

 pointed head of dense foliage which makes this tree such 

 a beautiful object in the alpine forests of the west and the 

 not unworthy associate of the lovely Patton's Spruce. 

 Among the seedlings raised at the Arnold Arboretum is a 

 plant of this Abies which has remained a low flat cushion 

 only a few inches in height, which now promises to be one 

 of the most attractive of the dwarf hardy conifers. 



Abies amabilis, Abies nobilis, Abies magnifica and Abies 

 grandis, the four largest Fir-trees in the world, can be kept 

 alive here in sheltered positions, although none of them 

 will probably ever be of any permanent value in our plan- 

 tations. Of these four trees Abies nobilis of the mountains 

 of Oregon and Washington is, perhaps, the hardiest, and 

 fairly healthy specimens can occasionally be found in 

 eastern gardens. Abies amabilis, which has always grown 

 badly in cultivation, even in Europe, is a more northern 

 tree. It grows, however, very slowly in the eastern states, 

 and gives little promise of ever becoming large enough to 

 show its true character and beauty. The other American 

 species, Abies venusta of the Santa Lucia Mountains of 

 California, the least widely distributed of all the Abies, and 

 Abies religiosa of Mexico, are too tender for New England 

 and the middle states, so that of the ten American species 

 only Abies concolor is really valuable in eastern gardens 

 where, moreover, it will possibly be beautiful only during 

 the years of its early vigor. 



In Japan there are probably only five species of Abies, 

 although a number of others have been described at dif- 

 ferent times. These trees are all hardy in New England, 

 where they grow with varied success. The largest and 

 most beautiful of the Japanese Firs is Abies firma, which I 

 have seen in Japan only in cultivation, when it often 

 attains a height of 120 feet and produces a tall straight stem 

 from four to six feet in diameter. As it grows in temple 

 gardens near Tokyo, where ihe climate is not very unlike 

 that of Charleston, South Carolina, it is the handsomest 

 of all Firs, distinguished by nobility of port and bright 

 green and very lustrous long rigid leaves which are some- 

 times sharply pointed and sometimes notched at the apex. 

 This beautiful tree has generally proved a disappointment 

 in the United States and Europe. It is very hardy even in 

 eastern Massachusetts, where it grows rapidly and where 

 in the Arboretum it has produced cones. In this country, 

 however, it is almost always ragged and miserable in 

 appearance, and it evidently needs a warmer and moister 

 climate than that of the northern states to develop its 

 beauties. 



Abies homolepis, which is usually cultivated in our gar- 

 dens under the name of Abies brachyphylla, is the common 

 Fir of central Japan, where it abounds at elevations between 

 4,000 and 5,000 feet above the sea, and where it is scattered 

 singly or in small groups through the Birch and Oak woods 

 which exist just below the subalpine Hemlock forest belt. 

 It is a massive, although not a tall, tree, and in old age is 

 easily distinguished from all other Firs by its broad round 

 head, the branches near the tops of the trees growing more 

 vigorously and to a greater length than those lower on the 



