Abies 807 



have broader bands of stomata than in that species — eight to twelve lines in 

 A. Fraseri, usually only six lines in A. balsamea. The cones differ mainly in the 

 larger bracts, which are much exserted and reflexed over the edges of the scales 

 next below ; whereas in A. balsamea the bracts are either concealed, or, if slightly 

 exserted, are never reflexed, (A. H.) 



Distribution 



Abies Fraseri is very restricted in its range of distribution, being only found in 

 the Alleghany Mountains of south-western Virginia, North Carolina, and eastern 

 Tennessee, where it often forms forests of considerable extent at elevations of 4000 

 to 6000 feet above sea-level. These forests are usually pure ; but occasionally this 

 species grows mixed with black spruce, birch, and beech. The tree averages about 

 40 feet in height ; it only rarely attains 70 feet. 



Sargent in an article ^ on this species gives a good illustration of a forest, at 

 about 5000 feet altitude on the Black Mountain range, a spur of the Blue Ridge in 

 North Carolina ; which is very like some forests that I saw when I visited this 

 most interesting region in 1895. 



History and Cultivation 



Abies Fraseri was discovered by the Scotch traveller and botanist whose name 

 it bears, John Fraser, in the first decade of the nineteenth century ; and plants of it 

 were first distributed from Messrs. Lee's nursery, at Hammersmith, in 1811, The 

 excellent figure in Pinetum Woburnense, was taken from the original tree in this 

 nursery, where it had then attained 16 feet in height, at about twenty-eight years of 

 age. 



The tree is short-lived, and the plants of the first introduction are probably all 

 long since dead. According to Sargent,^ seeds of A. balsamea, collected in Pennsyl- 

 vania and Canada, where specimens are occasionally found, in which the tips of the 

 bracts of the cone are slightly exserted, have been very generally sold as A. Fraseri. 

 Seedlings of the Carolina tree were, however, distributed by the Arnold Arboretum 

 a few years prior to 1889. We know of no trees of any size now living in this 

 country. Some seedlings which I brought from N. Carolina in 1895 soon died. 



(H. J. E.) 



' Garden and Forest, ii. 472, fig. 132 (1889). 



