A tree of this variety, with smooth bark on the trunk and branches, is growing at Powerscourt, and measured in 1906, 58 feet high by 5 feet 5 inches in girth. It bore numerous cones, similar to those of the type, but smaller in size and not so blue in colour. Another tree, about 40 feet high, also with very smooth bark, is growing at Holker Hall, Cark-in-Cartmel, Lancashire. (A.H.)
Distribution
Abies Webbiana occurs in the inner Himalayas from Afghanistan to Bhutan at elevations of 10,000 to 14,000 feet, but rare! below 11,000 feet. In its western area, i.e. in the north-west Himalaya, it usually commences to grow at 1000 to 2000 feet above the line where Abies Pindrow disappears ; and Gamble has never seen the two species growing together. It is here usually stunted and gnarled, with very short leaves and short thick cones, and occurs commonly with Betula utilis and Rhododendron campanulatum. Both it and the birch are the last trees to be seen before the treeless snowy wastes begin in the western Himalayas. In Nepal, according to Don, it occurs on Gosainthan.
In its eastern area, Bhotan and Sikkim, it is apparently a larger and finer tree. Griffith? mentions it, under the temporary name of Abies densa, as constituting vast forests in Bhotan, remarkable for their sombre appearance, at 12,000 feet, being rare under 9500 feet.
It is slow in growth, the average rate in Sikkim being about 12 rings per inch of radius, and is of much less economic importance than Abies Pindrow is in the north-west. Large quantities of planks, however, are exported from Lachoong to Tibet, and their preparation is an important native industry; but Hooker® says that the timber of Sikkim conifers is generally soft and inferior to that of European species.
In Sikkim this is the most abundant conifer in the interior ; extending from a little above 8000 to 13,000 feet or more; at its lower limits scattered or isolated among other trees at 9000 to 11,000 feet, and forming forests which are sometimes almost pure, or in the Lachen and Lachoong valleys mixed with Tsuga Brunoniana. Higher up on drier slopes it occurs scattered among Larix Griffithi and many species of shrubs and rhododendrons. On the Singalelah range which divides Sikkim from Nepal it begins to appear shortly before reaching Sandukpho, and on the boundary ridge north of that hill assumes a very wind-swept and often gnarled habit; the tops being often broken and covered with a dense mass of ferns, orchids, Ribes, begonias, and climbing plants of many species, and sometimes supporting shrubs and trees, which, favoured by the extremely moist summer climate, and from June to October almost constantly bathed in mist, become epiphytic. One tree which I specially noticed on this ridge at about 11,000 feet, bore on its decaying crown no less than four good-sized shrubs of different species, a Pyrus, an
1 As in the Chor Hills, south of Simla.
2 Notulæ, iv. 19 (1854), and Itin. Notes, ii. 141 (1848). Griffith subsequently abandoned his name A. densa and adopted that of A. Webbiana.
8 Himalayan Journals, ii. 45, note.
