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Noble Fir

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Noble Fir
Conservation status: Secure

Noble Fir foliage

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Pinophyta
Class:	Pinopsida
Order:	Pinales
Family:	Pinaceae
Genus:	Abies
Species:	A. procera

Binomial name

Abies procera
Rehder

The Noble Fir (Abies procera) is a western North American fir, native to the Cascade Range and Coast Range mountains of extreme northwest California and western Oregon and Washington in the United States. It is a large evergreen tree typically up to 40-70 m tall and 2 m trunk diameter, rarely to 89 m tall and 2.7 m diameter, with a narrow conic crown. The bark on young trees is smooth, grey, and with resin blisters, becoming red-brown, rough and fissured on old trees. The leaves are needle-like, 1-3.5 cm long, glaucous blue-green above and below with strong stomatal bands, and a blunt to notched tip. They are arranged spirally on the shoot, but twisted slightly s-shaped to be upcurved above the shoot. The cones are erect, 11-22 cm long, with the purple scales almost completely hidden by the long exserted yellow-green bract scales; ripening brown and disintegrating to release the winged seeds in fall.

It is a high altitude tree, typically occurring at 900-2,700 m altitude, though only rarely reaching tree-line.

It is very closely related to Red Fir (Abies magnifica), which replaces it further southeast in southernmost Oregon and California, being best distinguished by the leaves having a groove along the midrib on the upper side; Red Fir does not show this. Red Fir also tends to have the leaves less closely packed, with the shoot bark visible between the leaves, whereas the shoot is largely hidden in Noble Fir. Red Fir cones also mostly have shorter bracts, except in Abies magnifica var. shastensis; this variety is considered by some botanists to be a hybrid between Noble Fir and Red Fir.

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