Abies Nordmanniana was first recognised as a distinct species by the Finnish botanist, Nordmann, Professor at Odessa, whose name it bears. He found it in 1836 in the Caucasian province of Imeretia. Pallas and other early botanists had referred the Caucasian silver fir to Abies pectinata, It was introduced! into Europe in 1848, when Alexander von Humboldt obtained seeds from the Caucasus, which were sown in the Berlin Botanic Garden. (A.H.)
Cultivation
No other silver fir found in the Old World is more thoroughly at home in Great Britain, for it grows luxuriantly on soils where the common silver fir will not thrive ; is absolutely uninjured by spring frost, even in a young state, and ripens seed as far north as Perthshire and County Down. It seems equally at home on rich loam in the south-east of England, on oolite gravel in the Cotswold Hills, and in the peaty soil and wet climate of Argyllshire. Out of 102 returns sent to the Conifer Conference from all parts of Great Britain, 78 mention this tree and nearly all speak well of it, though it is said to fail at about thirty years old on strong loam in Worcestershire, and to be liable to aphis at Durris in Kincardineshire.”
Sir Herbert Maxwell? states that the Crimean silver fir (a misleading name, as it does not occur wild in the Crimea), after it attains twenty to thirty years of age, frequently succumbs to the attacks of aphis, and gives as an instance in proof of this, that at Benmore, where large numbers were planted thirty to forty years ago, very few now remain. But I do not think that this is a fair example, as the climate of Benmore is very wet, and the soil in many places very shallow. In the warmer and drier parts of Scotland I have seen many flourishing specimens, though not so fine as in England.
Wilkie * says that at Tyninghame, in East Lothian, it is later in starting growth than the common silver fir, grows more freely when young, and either for use or ornament is certainly the more valuable of the two. Webster, also, whose experience was gained in Ireland, North Wales, and Kent, says,’ “If A. ~odz/zs be the best of the Californian silver firs, this is without doubt the finest of the European or Asiatic species.” He expected that at no distant date it would supplant the silver fir for forest planting, the timber being of excellent quality, the tree more ornamental, and less exacting as regards soil. He says that it succeeds well on reclaimed peat bog, stiff loam, decomposed vegetable matter, and light gravelly soils.
1 Hansen, in Journ. Roy. Hort. Soc. xiv. 471 (1892). In the catalogue of the Pinetum at Beernem, in western Flanders, Baron Serret says that he received his specimen in April 1847, from Lawson and Son, Edinburgh; and the earliest intro- duction would seem from this to have been prior to that stated by Hansen.
2 A. Nordmanniana, the most susceptible of all silvers to attack by Chermes either in a seedling or older state. For general purposes this tree is doomed, and it is only by repeated spraying with insecticide that it will be possible to preserve even the largest specimens. In growth, it has proved itself much slower than A. pectinata, and being densely branched and of a shade-bearing nature, its timber when cut up has generally been coarse and knotty. In Scotland it has never been regarded by foresters as of economic importance. —(J.D. Crozier.)
3 Green’s Encyclopedia of Agriculture, ii, 112 (1908). The erroneous statement that this fir occurs wild in the Crimea appears to have been first made in Veitch’s Man. Coniferæ, 1st ed. 102 (1881), and has been repeated by Masters, Hansen, the Kew Handlist of Conifers, etc. No species of Abies grows wild in the Crimea. Cf. Démidoff, Voyage Russie Meridionale et la Crimée, ii. 231, 232, 375, 646 (1842).
4 Trans. Royal Scot. Arb. Soc. xii. 211 (1889).
5 Ibid. 257.
