9800 feet elevation in the Peling Mountains in the province of Kansu in China. The identification of herbarium specimens of Abies is difficult, and the Kansu plant will probably turn out to be a new and distinct species.
Identification
This species, with leaves covering the branchlet on the upper side, which are very white beneath, truncate and bifid at the apex, and less appressed than is the case in.4. Nordmanutana, is further characterised by its small resinous buds, median resin-canals in the leaves, and smooth branchlets with short erect pubescence. The distinctions between it and A. Mariesit are given under the latter species. (A.H.)
History and Distribution
Abies Veitchii was discovered on Fuji-yama by J. Gould Veitch in 1860. According to Sargent’ it was introduced by Mr. T. Hogg into Parson’s nurseries in Flushing, New York, in 1876, and a plant raised there was 16 feet high in 1889. It was cultivated in the United States for a time under the name of Abies japonica. It was not known in England or on the continent until 1879, when seeds were sent home? to Messrs. Veitch by their collector Maries.
The best account of the distribution is given by Mayr, who considers the tree to be the typical silver fir of the cold region of Japan, a zone which does not occur in Kiushu, where there are no mountains high enough. In Shikoku, A, Veitchii is very rare, only about 200 trees being known, which grow on the summit (6600 feet elevation) of Ishitzuchi-yama. It extends in the main island of Japan over the central mountain chain, from Fuji-yama to lat. 39, growing at elevations of 6600 feet and upwards. Mayr denies its occurrence beyond lat. 39°; and states that north of this line it is replaced by Abies Mariesii,3 which thus inter- venes over three degrees of latitude between the southern region, occupied by A. Veitchii, and the northern region, occupied by A. sachalinensis, these two species not meeting at any point, and having no transitional forms. A. Veitchii either forms pure woods or is associated with Picea hondoensis and Picea Alcockiana, but never with Picea polita. Sometimes it is mixed with Tsuga diversifolia or with A. Mariesii.
Shirasawa gives its lower limit of altitude in the main island as 5000 feet, and states that it attains about 70 feet in height by 7 feet in girth.
According to Mayr and Matsumura, the Japanese name, which is exclusively applied to this species, is Shirabaso. Shiramomi is also another name for the tree.
So far as I could learn the tree is of no special economic value in Japan.
1 Garden and Forest, ii. 589 (1889). In this journal, x. 511 (1897) the statement is made that Mr. Hogg introduced it some forty years earlier, evidently a mistake for twenty years. 4. Veitchzi is very hardy in the United States, where it has produced cones.
2 Hortus Veitchii, 337 (1906).
3 Prof. Miyabe showed me, in his herbarium, a barren specimen with small leaves, from Samani, near Cape Erimo, in eastern Hokkaido, which he believed to be A. Veitchii. This was A. sachalinensis, Masters, var. nemorensis, Mayr,
