Plants of the Rocky Mountains — Supplement I. 331 



"composing almost the entire forest growth of the mountain slopes of 

 Middle Park about the head of Grand River: a magnificent tree, 80 to 

 100 feet high, with an even, columnar trunk, below, 2-2^ feet in diameter, 

 tapering upwards; of rapid growth ; bark scaly, smooth and quite thin, 

 of a purplish-brown color, full of tannin, and quite different from the 

 rough brown bark of A. nigra of Wisconsin; wood remarkably white and 

 soft, free of knots and scarcely resinous, preferred for inside work." Could 

 this be Abies rubra Loud., and specifically distinct from A. nigra? 



Pixrs ARisTATA, Engelm., in St. Louis Transact., vol, 2, tab. 5 and 6. 

 Dr. Parry had the good luck to discover this very peculiar and exclusively 

 alpine species " which does not descend lower than 9000 or 10,000 feet," 

 on the higher mountains of Clear Creek. As a full description and a 

 figure has been given in the Transactions of the St. Louis Academy, I 

 confine myself here to the statement that it is our only representative of 

 Endlicher's section, Pseudostrobus, which comprises numerous Mexican, a 

 few Central American, and a single West Indian species; it is character- 

 ized by quinate entire leaves and horizontal ovate cones, with thin apo- 

 physes on the long-raucronate or aristate scales, and small winged seeds. 

 Ir< sheltered situations it forms a tree 40 or 50 feet high and 1 or 2 feet in 



exceedingly slow, as a stick of scarcely more than one inch in diameter, 

 brought back by Dr. Parry, shows nea'rly fifty annual rings, some of them 

 B-V of a line, and none mo're than ^ of a line wide. 



^7 Dr. James, has to some extent remained doubtful, as his description in 

 the account of Long's Expedition, and Torrey's diagnosis in the Annals 

 of the New York Lyceum (vol. ii, p. 249) are based on notes only, no 

 specimens having been collected. By later writers it has been ignored, 

 until Mr. Fendler in 1847 collected it on the mountains above Santa Fe, 

 (Coll. K Mex. No. 832), when a short notice was published by tlie writer 

 •I the appendix to Wislizenus' Memoir of a Tour to New Mexico, etc., 

 1848. Endlicher, in his Synopsis Coniferarura, 184Y, does not enumerate 

 't, and Carriere in his Traite des Coniferes, 1855, credits it to W islizenus, 

 translating only my short remarks. Nuttall, however, had already (in 

 ^849) given a somewhat extended account of it, with a poor figure, m the 

 ""Titinuation of Michaux's Sylva (vol. iii, p. 107, pi. 112), without clearing 

 ''•' t'"^ doubts, which Dr. Parry in his present expedition, 1862, is ex- 

 's finally to settle. My brother, H. Engelraann, collected it on the 

 " aters of the Platte, and Dr. Hayden on the mountams about Uie 

 aters of the Yellowstone, Missouri and Columbia rivers Dr. 

 notes that the cones grow several together, "semipendulous at the 

 , ---"iity of the horizontal branchiets; ' "" "' " 



Near Santa Fe it grows ; 



, the elevatio 



10,000 feet, and in 1 ,, ^. . .... 



•^^ars "pendulous" cones, according to Fendler s note, rtnus fiexuis is 

 ^•■taialy intermediate between the sections Cembra and Strobm of 

 Endlicher, and unites the two, as does P.cembroides, Newberry, Pac.f. 



