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Firs — Part 2

The wood of this fir is pale brown, soft, light and coarse, used to a limited extent in interior house finishing, cooperage and boxing and for woodenwares. The tree grows rapidly in European parks.

The Balsam Fir (A. Fraseri, Poir.) is a tree 40 to 60 feet high which grows in forests at an altitude of 4,000 to 6,000 feet on the Appalachian Mountains from southwestern Virginia into Tennessee and North Carolina. It forms an open pyramid of rather stiff limbs, ending in twigs crowded with dark, lustrous foliage. The purple cones are ornamented by pale yellow-green bracts with toothed margins which turn back over the scales. The wood of this tree is rarely used as lumber. It has the faults of fir wood in general, and the trees are inaccessible to lumbermen. The tree is short lived and has little ornamental value.

The Balsam Fir (A. lasiocarpa, Nutt.) grows in the high, mountainous regions from Alaska south along the Cascades of Washington and Oregon, and follows the Rocky Mountains from Idaho to Arizona. The trees are tall, narrow spires with thickly crowded branches, the oldest of which droop slightly. They range from 80 to 180 feet high, with trunks 2 to 5 feet in diameter. The bark of the limbs changes from the reddish pubescence of the twigs to pale grey or almost white. Aged trees have shallow-fissured bark covered with cinnamon-coloured scales.

The blue-green of the leaves is intensified by the striking indigo colour of both kinds of flowers in their season. The cones are rich, deep purple, and plain, the broad scales quite concealing the ruddy bracts.

White Fir (Abies concolor, Lindl. & Gord.)--A narrow pyramidal tree, 125 to 250 feet high, with trunk 3 to 6 feet through; branches short, stout with long, stout, much-divided side branches extending forward; twigs stout, smooth. Bark 3 to 6 inches thick, broken into rounded ridges by deep, irregular furrows, and the surface into plate-like scales. Wood soft, light, pale brown to white, coarse and weak. Buds globular, 1/4 inch thick. Leaves 2-ranked by crowding; erect, pale blue to whitish, becoming dull green when old; on fruiting branches often thickened into a keel above, curved and short; on lower branches flat, straight, 2 to 3 inches long. Flowers: pistillate on upper branches, with striking greenish bracts; staminate dark red, on middle limbs. Fruit erect oblong-cylindrical cones, 5 to 6 inches long, green, purple or yellow; scales broad, rounded at apex, concealing bracts; seeds 1/3 to 1/2 inch long with shining red wings. Preferred habitat, mountain slopes. Distribution, Colorado west to Oregon and California, south to New Mexico and Arizona, including the Great Basin. Uses: Wood for butter tubs and boxing. Best of Western firs for planting in the Eastern States. A favourite ornamental in Europe.

This white fir is known as a silver fir, from the pale foliage and from the grey bark of its branches. The forests of A. magnifica coming down the high slopes meet those of A. concolor coming up. The trees are gigantic in the Sierras; scarcely of more than medium height and girth among the Rockies. The leaves are unusually long for a fir tree, on lower limbs often 2 to 3 inches. The flowers are conspicuous, the staminate rich red, the pistillate ornamented with backward-turning, finger-lobed bracts. The cones are stout, various in colours, with broad, short scales that quite cover the bracts. The seed wings are rose coloured and lustrous.

The tree is often planted in Europe; it is the most vigorous native fir tree met in cultivation on the Atlantic side of this continent. The best trees in Eastern nurseries come from seeds collected in the Rocky Mountains.

Another Silver Fir (A. venusta, K. Koch.) has leaves almost willow-like in form, so broad are the flat, pointed blades. They are 1 to 2 1/2 inches long, yellow-green with silvery linings, especially bright on the newest shoots. The spray is flat by reason of the 2-ranked arrangement of the leaves, which stand out at right angles to the twig. The tree habit is peculiar. A slender trunk 100 to 150 feet high bears a broad pyramid of pendulous limbs, which is surmounted by a narrow spire for the last 20 feet of the tree's height. The cones are 3 to 4 inches long, and striking in ornamentation. The long, stiff whip of a pale yellowish brown bract extends an inch or two beyond each purple scale.

This fir is confined to elevated canon sides in the mountains of Monterey County, California, and has no commercial significance. Seeds sent to Europe produce handsome ornamental trees in North Italy and in warmer sections of England.