The branches are mostly whorled in fives, and stand out from the
straight, red-purple bole in level, or in old trees in drooping collars,
every branch regularly pinnated like fern-fronds, making broad plumes,
singularly rich and sumptuous-looking. The flowers are in their prime
about the middle of June; the male red, growing on the underside of the
branches in crowded profusion, giving a very rich color to all the
trees; the female greenish-yellow, tinged with pink, standing erect on
the upper side of the topmost branches, while the tufts of young leaves,
about as brightly colored as those of the Douglas spruce, make another
grand show. The cones mature in a single season from the flowers. When
mature they are about six to eight inches long, three or four in
diameter, covered with a fine gray down and streaked and beaded with
transparent balsam, very rich and precious-looking, and stand erect like
casks on the topmost branches. The inside of the cone is, if possible,
still more beautiful. The scales and bracts are tinged with red and the
seed-wings are purple with bright iridescence. Both of the silver firs
live between two and three centuries when the conditions about them
are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may be seen heavily
storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising generation,
with a protecting grove of hopeful saplings pressing close around his
feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems wanting.
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