concolor is a charmingly symmetrical tree
with its flat plumy branches arranged in regular whorls around the
whitish-gray axis which terminates in a stout, hopeful shoot, pointing
straight to the zenith, like an admonishing finger. The leaves are
arranged in two horizontal rows along branchlets that commonly are less
than eight years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds
of ferns. The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, from three
to four inches long, and one and a half to two inches wide, and stand
upright on the upper horizontal branches. Full-grown trees in favorable
situations are usually about 200 feet high and five or six feet in
diameter. As old age creeps on, the rough bark becomes rougher and
grayer, the branches lose their exact regularity of form, many that are
snow-bent are broken off and the axis often becomes double or otherwise
irregular from accidents to the terminal bud or shoot. Nevertheless,
throughout all the vicissitudes of its three or four centuries of life,
come what may, the noble grandeur of this species, however obscured, is
never lost.
The magnificent Silver Fir, or California Red Fir (Abies magnifica)
is the most symmetrical of all the Sierra giants, far surpassing its
companion species in this respect and easily distinguished from it by
the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that
of the white, and by its larger cones, its more regularly whorled and
fronded branches, and its shorter leaves, which grow all around the
branches and point upward instead of being arranged in two horizontal
rows.
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