Staminate flowers yellow, tinged with purple. Pistillate flowers with nearly orbicular purple scales, shorter than the serrulate greenish-yellow bracts, which are emarginate above and end in long, recurved tips.
Cones sub-sessile, ovoid-cylindrical, tapering both at the base and towards the round or flattened apex; purple’ in colour, 2 to 4 inches long, about an inch in diameter. Scales, about ⅝ inch wide and long; lamina fan-shaped, rounded and undulate above, lateral margins denticulate and curving to the truncate or auricled base; claw wedge-shaped. Bracts variable in length, exserted or concealed between the scales; claw oblong; lamina trapezoidal and denticulate, ending in a mucro. Seeds purplish, about ½ inch long ; wing about as long as the body of the seed.
In the wild state considerable variation occurs in the habit of the tree, which becomes a mere shrub at high altitudes. The cones vary both in size and in the length of the bracts, which are either slightly exserted, or quite concealed between the scales. Prof. Balfour found on the same tree at Keillour cones both with long and with short bracts.
Var. Hudsonia, Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. 597 (1878).
Abies Hudsonia, Bosc. ex Carrière, Conif. i. 200 (1855).
According to Engelmann this is a sterile dwarf form which occurs above the timber line on the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Whether this is identical with the A. Hudsonia, which occurs in cultivation, is uncertain, The latter, according to Sargent,’ is of unknown origin, but is probably, though it has never produced cones, a depauperate form of A. balsamea. It has densely crowded branches, short numerous branchlets, and small broad leaves, about 3 inch in length; and is a dwarf spreading shrub, only a foot or two in height. It differs from A. balsamea in having marginal resin-canals.
Var. macrocarpa.? This was discovered near the Wolf River, Wisconsin, and raised by Robert Douglas at Waukegan nursery; it is said to be a distinct and beautiful form with longer leaves and larger cones than the type.
Distribution
The balsam fir extends far to the northward in the Dominion of Canada, its northerly limit being a line drawn from the interior of Labrador north-westward to the shores of the Lesser Slave Lake. It occurs in Newfoundland and in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and descends in the United States in the west through northern Michigan and Minnesota to northern and central Iowa, and in the east extends through New England and New York, along the Catskill and Alleghany mountains to south-western Virginia. It is common and often forms a considerable part of the forest on low swampy ground, while on well-drained hill-sides
it is met with as single trees or small groves chiefly in the spruce forests. It ascends to 5000 feet on the Adirondacks. (A.H.)
1 In cultivated specimens the cones are occasionally olive-green in colour, and rarely exceed 2 inches in length.
2 Garden and Forest, x. 510 (1897).
3 Ibid. v. 274 (1892) and x. 510 (1897).
