Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol04B.djvu/144

Mountains in Washington, and in the east to the mountains of Idaho, Montana (Plate 225), Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. Everywhere it grows up to or very near the timber line, and on the shores of Lake Bennett in northern British Columbia descends to 2500 feet. In Colorado it reaches 10,000 feet.

Macoun states that it crosses the Rocky Mountains into the Peace River region, and the country between the Little Slave Lake and the Athabasca River; and that in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta it occurs with Picea Engelmanni, but is less common; and in a letter states that it is an enormous tree at Glacier, but becomes dwarfed at higher elevations, ascending to 7000 feet in that region.

Wilcox? writes of it as follows :—

“The balsam fir has about the same range as the white spruce (Picea Engelmanni) but is less common. At a distance it is hardly to be distinguished from the spruce, but the bark on branches and young trees is raised in blisters which contain a drop or two of balsam. This balsam exudes from the bark wherever it is bruised. At first it is a very clear liquid, regarded by old trappers and woodsmen as a certain cure, when brewed with hot water, for colds and throat troubles. On exposure to the air it hardens into a brittle resin, which the woodsman melts into pitch to seal boxes or mend leaky canvas. The camper-out makes his bed from balsam boughs, as they are more springy and less rigid than those of the spruce.”

I saw this tree in perfection in the Paradise valley on the south-west slopes of Mount Rainier in August 1904. An excellent illustration of this locality is given by C. O. Piper in Garden and Forest, vol. iv. p. 382, which shows the tall slender spiry habit of the fir. Here it lives in company with A. amabilis in the lower part of its range, and with Tsuga Pattoniana, and Cupressus nootkatensis higher up; growing in small clumps and groves, as shown in the illustration referred to. It seems to be a very slow grower, a tree felled by Plummer being only 15 inches in diameter at 125 years old. The tallest that I measured here was 77 feet by 5 feet 8 inches, but Sargent says that it occasionally attains 175 feet in height (probably in the Olympic Mountains). The seedlings, which I usually found growing on rotten logs, were very slow in growth, and must be often eight to ten years old before their roots reach the soil.

Abies lasiocarpa was discovered by Douglas in 1832, and his specimen, which is the type of Pinus lasiocarpa of W.J. Hooker, the first name applied to the species, is preserved in the herbarium at Kew.

Seeds were first collected about 1863, by Dr. Parry in Colorado; but it is not known if any plants raised from these still survive. The first plants raised in the Arnold Arboretum date from 1873, the largest of them being now only 10 to 12 feet in height. Roezl collected seeds in 1874 in Colorado.’ According to Syme,’ a small

1 The Rockies of Canada, 62 (1900).

2 Masters, Journ. Bot. xxvii. 135 (1889), refers these seeds doubtfully to New Mexico; but there is no doubt that they were collected in Colorado. Cf. Lavallée’s article on Nouveaux Coniferes du Colorado et de la Californie, in Journ. Soc. Cent. Hort. France, 1875.

3 Gard, Chron. iii. 586 (1888).