Abies Concolor

''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, including the Cascade Range and southern Rocky Mountains, and into the isolated mountain ranges of southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico. It naturally occurs at elevations between .

It is popular as an ornamental landscaping tree and as a Christmas tree.

Description

This large evergreen conifer grows best in the central Sierra Nevada of California, where the record specimen was recorded as tall and measured in diameter at breast height (dbh) in Yosemite National Park.American Forestry Association. 1978. National register of big trees. American Forests 84(4):19-47 The typical size of white fir ranges from tall and up to dbh. The largest specimens are found in the central Sierra Nevada, where the largest diameter recorded was found in Sierra National Forest at (1972); the west slope of the Sierra Nevada is also home to the tallest specimen on record, in height. ''Abies concolor'' subsp. ''concolor'' (Rocky mountain white fir) rarely exceeds tall or dbh. Large (but not huge) trees in good soil range from tall and from dbh in California and southwestern Oregon and to tall and dbh in Arizona and New Mexico. The dead tree tops sometimes fork into new growth.

The gray bark is usually at least thick, and brown-hued inside. The leaves are needle-like, flattened, long and wide by 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 long and broad, green or purple ripening pale brown, with about 100–150 scales; the scale bracts are short, and hidden in the closed cone. The winged seeds are released when the cones disintegrate at maturity about 6 months after pollination.

White fir can live over 300 years.

Subspecies

As treated here, there are two subspecies; these are also variously treated at either the lower rank of variety by some authors, or as distinct species by others:

Botanical collection

White fir was first collected by Augustus Fendler on his expedition to the Santa Fe area of New Mexico in 1846–1847. Fender's patron George Engelmann, a St. Louis area physician and botanist, then described the plant. This tree was first collected in California by William Lobb on his expedition to California of 1849–1853, after it was overlooked by David Douglas in his 1825–27 expedition to the Pacific coast region.

The specific epithet ''concolor'' means "all one color".

Distribution

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, 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. It naturally occurs between above sea level.

Ecology

White fir is very closely related to grand fir (''Abies grandis''), with subspecies ''lowiana'' being particularly similar to the interior variety of grand fir, ''A. grandis'' var. ''idahoensis'', intergrading with it where they meet in the Cascades of Central Oregon. White fir occupies a broader range, including dryer and colder sites, being more drought tolerant and having thicker, fire-resistant bark. In Mexico, it is replaced by further close relatives, Durango fir (''A. durangensis'') and Mexican fir (''A. mexicana'').

Like grand fir, white fir is more shade tolerant than Douglas fir, but less so than western hemlock and western redcedar. White fir is a climax species, which means the forest has reached complex maturity in forest succession in western coniferous forests of the U.S. White fir and yellow pine (ponderosa pine/Jeffrey pine) have co-existed for millennia in old growth forests throughout their range. In the presence of logging of large diameter trees and exclusion of cleansing wildfires, young trees have become abundant over the past two centuries. White fir had been regarded as a pest in the past by those in the lumber industry, but this opinion has changed. White fir is now one of the most important of all commercial softwoods according to the Western Wood Products Association.

The white fir trait of retaining lower limbs creates an escape route for medium-to-small forest birds (such as spotted owl) from larger flying predators and provides a drip zone around the roots for collecting moisture. The retained limbs can become a fuel ladder

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