Plant Guide > Trees > Firs

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Firs

Genus ABIES, Link.

Trees of pyramidal habit with wide-spreading horizontal limbs bearing thick foliage masses. Wood weak, coarse grained. Bark smooth until quite old, pale, thin and blistered with overflowing resin vescicles; later, deeply and irregularly furrowed. Leaves usually flat, blunt, 2-ranked, persistent for 8 to 10 years, leaving circular scars. Flowers in axillary, scaly cones, pistillate
erect on upper branches; staminate on under side of branches lower down on the tree. Fruit annual, erect cones whose scales
fall off at maturity; seed resinous.

Twenty-five species of Abies are widely distributed over the Northern Hemisphere, including the northern highlands of Africa. Nordmann's fir (A. Nordmanniana) has come from the Caucasus into extensive cultivation in our Eastern and Northern States. It is supplemented by four European and two Japanese species of recognised merit for ornamental planting. The beauty of our native firs has been pointed out in the names botanists gave them. But they do not thrive, as a rule, in cultivation. For the lawn, we wisely choose exotic species.






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