Evergreen List

NOBLE FIR

Abies procera

Pine Family [Pinaceae]

sex

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

Luckily for viewers this specimen has not yet attained its usual maximum height of up to 51metres! The new leaves are a glaucaous greeny-blue. The older leaves a darkish-green. All either horizontal or drooping under their own weight.

Whereas the 'flowers' (actually cones) are a mid-green with a red 'cap'.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

The cones (probably female cones) are cylindrical and have a bright-red disc at the top (except the one at the top which seems to have an extra green head... Hmmm.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

The leaves on the main trunk are much greener than those on the branches, which vary between the glaucous-green of those at the tip to a darker green as you get nearer the trunk.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

The leaves on the main trunk are much greener than those on the branches, which vary between the glaucous-green of those at the tip to a darker green as you get nearer the trunk.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

The peripheral leaves on branches are hoary-hairy and thus appear glaucous-green. From wherever on the stem they grow, they curl upwardly. They taper to a point.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

The main stem has greener (aka less hairy) needle leaves which taper to a point and all directed upwards fairly close to the main 'stem' (to become what we know as a trunk when it matures as it grows higher).

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

A cone. This one with top which is like a head and similar to the much longer 'body' of the cone. According to one diagram on the internet of female cones, the item on the outside (the things that are green here with a long central spike angled downwards) is a 'woody seed scale'. It doesn't look woody to your Author - maybe it will eventually when it is older and more mature.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

And the black-lipped deep-red items do not seem to have any name at all. But we can indeed see the seeds in the centre on the topmost scale. All the other scales beneath will also have seeds, but which are just not visible beneath the topmost one.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

The seeds nestling in the centre. There seems to be a spiral of maybe 6 black-lipped things which are red just a little nearer the centre and taper down to each hold a fawn-coloured seed - which are in the centre.

Note the stray green pointed bract coming from a thin fawn-coloured stalk from the very centre. Presumably all the other long-spikey green bracts do likewise, but we cannot see their centres.

21st July 2014, The Packhorse PH, betwixt Hebden & Howarth.

Photo: © RWD

The un-named green bracts with their long spike in the centre. They are translucent at the edge, which is also very ragged. The whole caboodle is stacked in alternate layers of green bracts interleaved with black (tapering to red) short lip-like things each bearing a single seed in the centre. A noble man.

It probably acquired the name 'Noble Fir' from the red crowns at the top of the female cones.

Abies

procera

⇐ Global Aspect ⇒

Pinaceae

Distribution
family8Pine family8Pinaceae
BSBI maps

Abies
(Firs)