White fir

Description

Abies concolor, the white fir, is a coniferous tree in the pine family Pinaceae. This tree is native to the mountains of western North America from the southern Cascade range in Oregon, south throughout California and into the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir in northern Baja California; east through parts of southern Idaho, to Wyoming; and south throughout the Colorado Plateau and southern Rocky Mountains in Utah and Colorado, and into the isolated mountain ranges of southern Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico. White fir live over 300 years and naturally occur at an elevation between 900–3,400 m (2,950–11,200 ft). It is popular as an ornamental landscaping tree and as a Christmas tree. The specific epithet concolor means "all one color". This large evergreen coniferous tree grows best in the central Sierra Nevada of California, where the record specimen was recorded as 74.9 m (246 ft) tall and measured 4.6 m (183 in) in diameter at breast height (dbh) in Yosemite National Park.The typical size of white fir ranges from 25–60 m (80–195 ft) tall and up to 2.7 m dbh (8.9 ft). The largest specimens are found in the central Sierra Nevada, where the largest diameter recorded was found in Sierra National Forest at 58.5 x 8.5 m (192′ x 27′ 11″) (1972); the west slope of the Sierra Nevada is also home to the tallest specimen on record, 78.8 m (257.5 ft) in height.Rocky mountain white fir rarely exceed 38 m (125 ft) tall or 0.9 m (3 ft) dbh. Large but not huge trees, in good soil, range from 40 to 60 m (131 to 195 ft) tall and from 99 to 165 cm (39 to 65 in) dbh in California and southwestern Oregon and to 41 m (134 ft) tall and 124 cm (49 in) dbh in Arizona and New Mexico. The leaves are needle-like, flattened, 2.5–6 cm (1–2+3⁄8 in) long and 2 mm (3⁄32 in) wide by 0.5–1 mm (1⁄64–3⁄64 in) thick, green to glaucous blue-green above, and with two glaucous blue-white bands of stomatal bloom below, and slightly notched to bluntly pointed at the tip. The leaf arrangement is spiral on the shoot, but with each leaf variably twisted at the base so they all lie in either two more-or-less flat ranks on either side of the shoot, or upswept across the top of the shoot but not below the shoot. The cones are 6–12 cm (2+1⁄4–4+3⁄4 in) long and 4–4.5 cm (1+5⁄8–1+3⁄4 in) broad, green or purple ripening pale brown, with about 100–150 scales; the scale bracts are short, and hidden in the closed cone.