76 A MANUAL OF tHE CONIFER*. 



which account it is sometimes mistaken for the White Spruce. A 

 large form, with cones of unusual size and wood of soft texture, was' 

 once described as a distinct species and called Abies rubra,* or the 

 Eed Spruce, but it is now deemed only a variety of the Black 

 Spruce; its range is northwards. But the most remarkable variety is 

 found on the highest summits of the Adirondacks. It is the variation 

 of the tree into a mere procumbent shrub, so small that it offers but 

 little impediment 'to him who would walk over it. These bushes are 

 more or less flattened in outline, the branches issuing nearly from the 

 opposite sides of the trunk as in the Ground Hemlock. They grow 

 in dense patches, completely covering the ground, and in numerous 

 instances with their apices all pointing the same way. They have 

 the short internodes and the short pale leaves of the Bastard Spruce, t 

 The specific name nigra, "black," refers to the dark and sombre 

 aspect of the tree, and to the deeper colour of its foliage and cones, 

 compared with Abies alba. 



Abies orientalis is a smaller tree than the common Spruce; it 

 is rather dense in habit, owing to the numerous branchlets and 

 their ramifications, all of which are clothed with foliage much 

 appressed to them, so that they appear more slender than those 

 of other species. The leaves are close set on all sides of the 

 branchlets, stiff, obtusely pointed, and when mature of a deep glossy 

 green, the brightest in colour of all the Spruces. The cones are 

 small, sub -cylindrical, pointed at the apex, and from 2 to 3 inches 

 in length. 



Habitat. — Mount Taurus and the Caucasian Eegion, where it forms 

 dense forests. It is abundant in the neighbourhood of Trebizond and 

 the south-eastern shores of the Black Sea. 



Introduced into Great Britain in 1839. J 



Not much is known of the economical uses of Abies orientalis. Its 

 wood is remarkably durable and tough, § and is doubtless applied to 

 similar purposes as that of the European species. 



Abies orientalis is one of the most ornamental of the Firs. Although 

 the habit is of the same pyramidal character as that of the other 

 Spruces, it has its formality much diminished by the projection of 



* All the specimens we have seen of this Fir, and they are few in number, are scrubby 

 bushes, with branchlets more numerous and more slender, and with leaves somewhat 

 shorter and more linear than in Abies nigra. 



t From a Paper on Abies nigra, read before the Albany Institute, by C. H. Peck, Esq. 



+ Lawson's Pinetum Brit. Abies orientalis, p. 3. 



§ Ausgezeichnet dauerhaft und zahe. Henkel und Hockstetter, NadelMlaer, p. 193. 



