5 
597 ] ENGELMANN-—A SYNOPSIS OF THE AMERICAN FIRS. 
%. A. balsamea ( Finns, bin. sp. pi. 1421, 1753; Pari. 1. c. 423), Mar¬ 
shall Arb. Am. 102, Link, etc. A. balsamifera, Michx. FI. 2, 207, in part. 
—The northeastern “Balsam” extends from Canada and the northeastern 
States along the mountains to Virginia, and along the Great Lakes to and 
beyond the Mississippi. It is a larger tree than the last, often 70 feet high, 
i4 feet in diameter, and up to 150 years old; bark smooth and reddish-gray 
when young, brown and much cracked in old trees. Its slenderer cones 
with enclosed bracts (only their points sometimes protruding), and espe¬ 
cially the leaves with scarcely any hypoderm cells above and very few on 
edges and keel (fewer than in any other of our species and sometimes none) 
and with narrower bands of stomata below (of 4-8, usually about 6 series), 
readily distinguishes it. A. Hudsoriia of the gardens, often considered as 
a form of Fraseri , is a sterile dwarf form of balsamea, found also on the 
White Mountains of New Hampshire above the timber line. 
3. A. subalpina, Engelm. in Am. Naturalist, 1876, p. 554. A. lasio- 
carpa , Hook FI. B. A. 2, 163. ? A. bifolia , Mtirr. Proc. R. Hort. Soc. 3, 3x8. 
A. amabilis, Pari. 1. c. 426, in part. — Closely allied to the last species, 
the western'representative of which it must be considered to be; it extends 
from the higher mountains of Colorado and the adjoining parts of Utah 
northward to Wyoming and Montana, where it is the only species, and 
westward to the mountains of Oregon and into British Columbia (Fraser’s 
River) and southward probably to Mount Shasta, always scattered in the 
subalpine forests, and, at least in Colorado, coming up almost to the tim 
ber line* but never alone constituting forests. It is a larger tree than 
balsamea, often over 2 feet in diameter and 60-100 feet high, with thin, 
pale whitish, smooth bark, which only in very old trees becomes cracked 
and ashy-gray; timber so poor and soft that in some parts of the Rocky 
Mountains it is called pumpkin pine. Leaves like to those of balsamea, 
notched on sterile and pointed on fertile branches; hypoderm considera¬ 
ble, though interrupted on upper surface, crowded on edges and keel. 
Cones retuse, brown-purple, 2-34 inches long, i-i| inches in diameter, the 
smaller ones near the timber line. Scales rounded or almost; square, often 
almost as high as broad, similar in their proportions to those of balsamea, 
but larger; bracts short, emarginate, mucronate; seeds, including the 
wing, over 1 inch long, the latter nearly twice as long as it is wide. 
Var. fallax has the resin ducts of this species, but the foliage almost 
of concolor; leaves sometimes i4 or even i| inches long, mostly obtuse, 
and covered with stomata above, glaucous when young.—Dr. Newberry’s 
specimen in the Herb. Agricult. Dep. Washington, collected on the higher 
tops of the Cascades, south of the Columbia River, and described* by him 
as A. amabilis in Pac. R. Rep. 6, bot. 51, belongs here; the loose scalfes (12 
* His description of the foliage, however, seems to refer to what I call below A.grandis 
var. dens folia. Dr. N. may have mixed both forms, an unfortunate mishap which is by no 
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