CATALOGUE. 255 



CONIFERS. 



By Dk. George Engelmann. 



Abies* sdbalpina, 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 f-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, 2 £-3' or 3^' long, 1-1^' 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. 



Abies concolor, Lindley ; Engelm. Trans. I 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 falcate ; cones cylindrical-oblong, obtuse, 3-4' or 

 even 5' long, 1^— If thick, mostly apple-green, sometimes purplish-gray; 

 bracts orbicular-ovate, mostly mucronate, much shorter than the very 



* Abies, Link, not Don ; Abies sect. (Firs), Gray's Man. ; Pinus sect. Abies, Endl. Parlat. ; Picea, 

 Don. — Coniferous trees witb more or less flattened, and on the sterile branchlets, by a twist near their 

 bases, 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 mm in the larger diameter) 2-lobed pollen-grains ; cones erect on the more or less hori- 

 zontal branchlets, maturing iu 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 pergamentacoous 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. 



