116 ARISTOCRATS OF THE GARDEN 



fidence be recommended for purposes of general land- 

 scape planting. The more ornamental of those which 

 the experience of the Arnold Arboretum has proven to 

 be adapted to this climate I now propose cursorily to 

 mention. 



As a lawn tree and for ornamental planting gener- 

 ally, the best Fir and one of the most beautiful of all 

 Conifers is Abies concolor, native of the southern 

 Rockies from Pike's Peak in Colorado to the Shasta 

 Mountains in California where it grows two hun- 

 dred and fifty feet tall. The Colorado form in 

 particular is very hardy, though rarely found ex- 

 ceeding one hundred feet in height. It is a tree 

 of moderately rapid growth, with leaves pale gray- 

 green on both surfaces and flat-spreading branches in 

 tabuliform tiers close set one above the other, grad- 

 ually diminishing in length from the base to the 

 summit. The outline is conical and the branches 

 are long retained, and on trees forty years of age 

 sweep the ground and promise to do so for many 

 years to come. 



A worthy companion to A. concolor is the Japanese 

 A. homolepis, or A. brachyphylla as it is more usually 

 called. In Japan this tree grows one hundred feet tall 

 and has massive branches which form a broad flattened 

 or rounded head, and such trees in aspect resemble old 



