TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 
1596 
** InclusfE: bracts shorter than the scales. 
?. A. balsamea. 
3. A. subaipina. 
Sec. II. Grandes : Resin ducts close to the epidermis of the lower 
side, towards the edges; leaves on lower branches notched or obtuse; on 
upper obtuse, rarely ever acute; bracts enclosed.—Two western species. 
4. A. grandis. 
5. A . ctoncolor- 
Sec. III. Bracteat^e : Resin ducts as in last; upper side of the rigid, 
mostly acute, leaves without stomata, with a continuous layer of hypoderm 
cells, usually similar cells within the sheath of the fibro-vascular bundle; 
pallisade-parenchyma very strongly developed ; bracts exsert.—A Mexican 
and a southwestern species. 
6. A. religiosa. 
7. A. bracteata. 
Sec. IV. Nobiles: Leaves of the adult tree and especially of the fer-. 
tile branches quadrangular, short, curved, but scarcely twisted; resin ducts 
close to the epidermis of the lower side, and equidistant from the edge and 
keel; fibro-vascular bundles single; stomata on both sides; leaves of young 
trees much like, those of Sec. II.—Two species of the higher mountains of 
the Pacific slope. 
$. A. nob!ilis. 
** Inclusa : bracts shorter than scales. 
9. A. magnified. 
1. 4. Fraseri [Finns, Pursh. FI. 2, .639, 1816; Parlatore in DC. Prod. 
16, 2, 419), Lindh Pen. Cyc. 1, No. 5 (1&33), Forbes, Link, etc. This is 
probably the most local species in the United States, being confined to the 
tops of the highest mountains of North Carolina, which have an altitude 
of 6,000 feet or more, and the tops of which it covers together with some 
Picea nigra, but it never occurs mixed with the following species. — A 
small tree rarely as much as 30 or 40 feet high, and 12 op 18 inches in diam¬ 
eter, probably never more than 60 to 75 years old, w^h cinnamon-brown 
smoothish bark; readily distinguished from balsamea by the shorter, more 
oval cones with largely exsert and reflexed bracts, and always, even when 
sterile, by the almost, uninterrupted stratum of hypodermic cells on the 
upper side of the leaf, more crowded on the edges. The white bands on 
the under side of the leaf consist usually of 8 or 10, or even 12 series of 
stomata; heighth of scales (without the stipe) equal to one-half or two- 
thirds their width.; length of seeds equal to length and width of wing.— 
Forms of the next species with exsert tips of bracts, in the mountains of 
Pennsylvania, Vermont, and other northern regions, seem to have been 
mistaken for this species. In eastern as well as in European gardens forms 
of balsamea are often cultivated under the name of Fraseri* 
