The Firs

THE FIRS.

In

a forest of evergreens the spire form, needle leaves, and some other traits belong to several families. To dis tinguish the firs from the spruces, which they closely re semble in form and foliage, notice the position of the cones. All fir trees hold their ripe cones erect. No other family with large cones has this striking characteristic. All the rest of the conifers have pendent cones, except the small-fruited cypresses and arbor-vitaes.

All fir trees belong to the genus abies, whose twenty-five species are distributed from the Far North to the highlands of tropical regions in both the Eastern and Western Hemis pheres. All are tall pyramidal trees, with wide-spreading horizontal limbs bearing thick foliage masses, and with bark that contains vesicles full of resinous balsam. The branches grow in whorls and spread like fern fronds, covered for eight or nine years with the persistent leaves. Circular scars are left on the smooth branches when they fall.

The leaves are the distinguishing character of the genus when cones are lacking. They are usually flat, two-ranked on the twig, without stems, and blunt, or even notched at the tip. For these typical leaves one must look on the

lower sterile branches of the tree, and back of the growing shoots, where leaves are apt to be crowded and immature. The cones are borne near the tops of the trees, and on these branches the leaves are often crowded and not two ranked as they are below. The flowers of fir trees are abundant and showy, the staminate clusters appearing on the under sides of the platforms of foliage; the pistillate held erect on platforms higher up on the tree's spire. Al ways the flowers are borne on the shoots of the previous season. The cone fruits are cylindrical or ovoid, ripening in a single season and discharging their seeds at maturity. The stout tapering axis of the cone persists after seeds and scales have fallen.

The bark of fir trees is thin, smooth, and pale, with abundant resin vesicles, until the trees are well grown. As age advances the bark thickens and becomes deeply fur rowed. The wood is generally pale, coarse-grained, and brittle.