Fir

Benmore Botanic Gardens, Argyle, Scotland. Sept.09

Abies religiosa (Kunth) Schltdl. & Cham. Familia: Pinaceae. rbol completo. De San Antonio Tenextepec, municipio de Perote, Veracruz. Fotografa de Roberto Castro-Corts/CITRO, bajo licencia: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Del proyecto Conociendo las plantas de mi localidad, rescatando especies en peligro: reservaeleden.org/plantasloc/

Abies religiosa (Kunth) Schltdl. & Cham. Familia: Pinaceae. Detalle una rama. De San Antonio Tenextepec, municipio de Perote, Veracruz. Fotografa de Roberto Castro-Corts/CITRO, bajo licencia: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Del proyecto Conociendo las plantas de mi localidad, rescatando especies en peligro: reservaeleden.org/plantasloc/

Abies religiosa (Kunth) Schltdl. & Cham. Familia: Pinaceae. Detalle de rama con dos megaestrbilos (conos femeninos que darn origen a las semillas). De San Antonio Tenextepec, municipio de Perote, Veracruz. Fotografa de Roberto Castro-Corts/CITRO, bajo licencia: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Del proyecto Conociendo las plantas de mi localidad, rescatando especies en peligro: reservaeleden.org/plantasloc/

Location Mount Aenos or Ainos, Kefalonia, Greece, approx altitude of 1400m, July 2010

Location Mount Aenos or Ainos, Kefalonia, Greece, approx altitude of 1100m, July 2010

Location Mount Aenos or Ainos, Kefalonia, Greece, approx altitude of 1400m, July 2010

Location Mount Aenos or Ainos, Kefalonia, Greece, approx altitude of 1600m at the summit looking down towards Argostoli, July 2010

This tree was growing on top of Grandfather Mountain - the very top actually, just a few feet away from Calloway Peak (5,964 ft. elevation). Fraser firs are one of the dominant tree species in the Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest ecosystem on Grandfather Mountain, with red spruce being the other dominant species. This branch shows the erect cones with the typical bract extensions on the scales of the large green female cone.Fraser firs are susceptible to the Balsam Woolly Adelgid, an invasive insect pest introduced from Europe. If you have been to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park you may have seen stretches of "ghost forests" with dead fir trees killed by this insect. Mortality rates in the Smokies have been over 90% with entire mountain top communities of firs being wiped out. I remember visiting Clingman's Dome a few years ago and pretty much all the trees on top were dead. You can also see significant damage on Mount Mitchell on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville. Luckily, the firs on Grandfather Mountain still seem comparatively healthy.These are "friendly" conifers with soft needles that don't prick as much as those of other trees. This makes them ideally suited for handling and they are widely cultivated in tree farms around the area to be sold as Christmas trees.

Caucasian Fir (Abies nordmanniana) near Bakuriani, Republic of Georgia. Photographed on 12 July 2005

Sub-Alpine Fir(Abies lasiocarpa) is easily Identified by its extremely narrow, spire like crown. They also have a very crisp, pungent smell. It is a general rule that the higher in elevation a tree grows, the narrower its crown. An obvious adaption to the higher snowfall at high elevation. And as its name implies, these trees only grow up high, usually above 7,500ft, to tree line(11,000ft).

In the southwest, the sub-alpine firs(Abies lasiocarpa var arizonica) are a little different in that they have more furrowed bark.

This cone is protected by about 2 feet of snow - located around 4100ft above sea level on Mount Mansfield. I shot from underneath to get a clear view of it - one of my Flickr friends loves cones : ). Cheers, Paul

Abies religiosa (Kunth) Schltdl. & Cham. Familia: Pinaceae. rbol completo y hbitat. De San Antonio Tenextepec, municipio de Perote, Veracruz. Fotografa de Roberto Castro-Corts/CITRO, bajo licencia: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Del proyecto Conociendo las plantas de mi localidad, rescatando especies en peligro: reservaeleden.org/plantasloc/

2011-04-16 Lower Austria, district Wien-Umgebung (mixed forest; 495 msm Quadrant 7862/1).German name: Weiss-TanneSee also this photo.This twig interestingly shows the space/time between flowering periods of fir trees: as is commonly known, many trees only flower every other year in huge numbers (and in-between only a very few flower); this is a strategy to avoid all their seeds being eaten by animals, as there are a couple or so of years between those mass flowerings animals feeding on seeds cannot adopt to the mass production, and cannot increase their size uncontrollably (which would mean that most of the seeds would be eaten).Those years of abundance of flowers (and thus, seeds) also are known under the German name Mastjahre = 'feasting years' or 'mast years' something like it in English: there's bound to be a native English term for it but I don't know it.Now, what is so really interesting about this shot is that you can actually count how many years were between flowering, and further it is obvious that in the first year after a flowering year the tree only grow very little, evidently because it was exhausted from last year's flower and seed production; after that came a year of normal growth without flowering, and then yet another year of normal growth with flowering.Many thanks to Elisabeth Gruber for this explanation about male flowers, I never gave them much thought before.