Distribution. High mountain slopes and summits from about latitude 61° in Alaska, southward along the coast ranges to the Olympic Mountains of Washington, over all the high mountain ranges of British Columbia and Alberta, and southward along the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon to the neighborhood of Crater Lake, over the mountain ranges of eastern Washington and Oregon, and of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah to the San Francisco peaks of northern Arizona, and on the Sandia and Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico. Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree in the northern United States and in northern Europe, but of little value in cultivation. 4. Abies grandis Lindl. White Fir. [Illustration: Fig. 55] Leaves thin and flexible, deeply grooved very dark green and lustrous on upper surface, silvery white on lower surface, with two broad bands of 7—10 rows of stomata, on sterile branches remote, rounded and conspicuously emarginate at apex, 1½′—2¼′ long, usually about ⅛′ wide, spreading in two ranks nearly at right angles to the branch, on cone-bearing branches more crowded, usually 1′—1½′ long, less spreading or nearly erect, blunt-pointed or often notched at apex, on vigorous young trees ½′—¾′ long, acute or acuminate, usually persistent 4—10 years. Flowers: male pale yellow sometimes tinged with purple; female light yellow-green, with semiorbicular scales and short-oblong bracts emarginate and denticulate at the broad obcordate apex furnished with a short strongly reflexed tip. Fruit cylindric, slightly narrowed to the rounded and sometimes retuse apex, puberulous, bright green, 2′—4′ long, with scales usually about two thirds as long as wide, gradually or abruptly narrowed from their broad apex and three or four times as long as their short pale green bracts; seeds ⅜′ in length, light brown, with pale lustrous wings ½′—⅝′ long and nearly as broad as their abruptly widened rounded apex. A tree, in the neighborhood of the coast 250°—300° high, with a slightly tapering trunk often 4° in diameter, long somewhat pendulous branches sweeping out in graceful curves, and comparatively slender pale yellow-green puberulous branchlets becoming light reddish brown or orange-brown and glabrous in their second season; on the mountains of the interior rarely more than 100° tall, with a trunk usually about 2° in diameter, often smaller and much stunted at high elevations. Winter-buds subglobose, ⅛′—¼′ thick. Bark becoming sometimes 2′ thick at the base of old trees and gray-brown or reddish brown and divided by shallow fissures into low flat ridges broken into oblong plates roughened by thick closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, coarse-grained, not strong nor durable, light brown, with thin lighter colored sapwood; occasionally manufactured into lumber in western Washington and Oregon and used for the interior finish of buildings, packing-cases, and wooden-ware.