2. [Pseudotsuga macrocarpa] Mayr. Hemlock.
Leaves acute or acuminate, terminating in slender rigid callous tips, apparently 2-ranked by the conspicuous twist of their petioles, incurved above the middle, ¾′—1¼′ long, about 1/16′ wide, dark bluish gray. Flowers: male pale yellow, inclosed for half their length in conspicuous involucres of the lustrous bud-scales; female with pale green bracts tinged with red. Fruit produced on the upper branches and occasionally on those down to the middle of the tree, short-stalked, with scales near the middle of the cone 1½′—2′ across, stiff, thick, concave, rather broader than long, rounded above, abruptly wedge-shaped at the base, puberulous on the outer surface, often nearly as long as their comparatively short and narrow bracts with broad midribs produced into short flattened flexible tips; seeds full and rounded on both sides, rugose, dark chestnut-brown or nearly black and lustrous above, pale reddish brown below, ½′ long, ⅜′ wide, with a thick brittle outer coat, and wings broadest near the middle, about ½′ long, nearly ¼′ wide, and rounded at the apex.
A tree, usually 40°—50° and rarely 90° high, with a trunk 3°—4° in diameter, remote elongated branches pendulous below, furnished with short stout pendant or often erect laterals forming an open broad-based symmetrical pyramidal head, slender branchlets dark reddish brown and pubescent during their first year, becoming glabrous and dark or light orange-brown and ultimately gray-brown. Winter buds ovoid, acute, usually not more than ⅛′ long, often nearly as broad as long. Bark 3′—6′ thick, dark reddish brown, deeply divided into broad rounded ridges covered with thick closely appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, not durable; occasionally manufactured into lumber; largely used for fuel.
Distribution. Steep rocky mountain slopes in southern California at elevations of 3000°—5000° above the sea, often forming open groves of considerable extent, from the Santa Inez Mountains in Santa Barbara County to the Cuyamaca Mountains.
6. ABIES Link. Fir.
Tall pyramidal trees, with bark containing numerous resin-vesicles, smooth, pale, and thin on young trees, often thick and deeply furrowed in old age, pale and usually brittle wood, slender horizontal wide-spreading branches in regular remote 4 or 5-branched whorls, clothed with twice or thrice forked lateral branches forming flat-topped masses of foliage gradually narrowed from the base to the apex of the branch, the ultimate divisions stout, glabrous or pubescent, and small subglobose or ovoid winter branch-buds usually thickly covered with resin, or in one species large and acute, with thin loosely imbricated scales. Leaves linear, sessile, on young plants and on lower sterile branches flattened and mostly grooved on the upper side, or in one species 4-sided, rounded and usually emarginate at apex, appearing 2-ranked by a twist near their base or occasionally spreading from all sides of the branch, only rarely stomatiferous above, on upper fertile branches and leading shoots usually crowded, more or less erect, often incurved or falcate, thick, convex on the upper side, or quadrangular in some species and then obtuse, or acute at apex and frequently stomatiferous on all sides; persistent usually for eight or ten years, in falling leaving small circular scars. Flowers axillary, from buds formed the previous season on branchlets of the year, surrounded at the base by conspicuous involucres of enlarged bud-scales, the male very abundant on the lower side of branches above the middle of the tree, oval or oblong-cylindric with yellow or scarlet anthers surmounted by short knob-like projections, the female usually on the upper side only of the topmost branches, or in some species scattered also over the upper half of the tree, erect, globose, ovoid or oblong, their scales imbricated in many series, obovate, rounded above, cuneate below, much shorter than their acute or dilated mucronate bracts. Fruit an erect ovoid or oblong-cylindric cone, its scales closely imbricated, thin, incurved at the broad apex and generally narrowed below into long stipes, decreasing in size and sterile toward the ends of the cone, falling at maturity with their bracts and seeds from the stout tapering axis of the cone long-persistent on the branch. Seeds furnished with large conspicuous resin-vesicles, ovoid or oblong, acute at base, covered on the upper side and infolded below on the lower side by the base of their thin wing abruptly enlarged at the oblique apex; seed-coat thin, of 2 layers, the outer thick, coriaceous, the inner membranaceous; cotyledons 4—10, much shorter than the inferior radicle.
Abies is widely distributed in the New World from Labrador and the valley of the Athabasca River to the mountains of North Carolina, and from Alaska through the Pacific and Rocky Mountain regions to the highlands of Guatemala, and in the Old World from Siberia and the mountains of central Europe to southern Japan, central China, Formosa, the Himalayas, Asia Minor, and the highlands of northern Africa. Thirty-three species are now recognized. Several exotic species are cultivated in the northern and eastern states; of these the best known and most successful as ornamental trees are Abies Nordmanniana, Spach, of the Caucasus, Abies cilicica Carr., of Asia Minor, Abies cephalonica Loud., a native of Cephalonia, Abies Veitchii Lindl., and Abies homolepis S. & Z., of Japan, and Abies pinsapo, Boiss., of the Spanish Sierra Nevada.
Abies is the classical name of the Fir-tree.