Silver fir forest in the Susa Valley, Italy [Renzo Motta].

Bark and crown of a tree in Selva de Irati, Pyrenees, Spain [Jose Angel Campos Sandoval].

Illustration from Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Flora von Deutschland Österreich und der Schweiz, 1885, Gera, Germany (Stüber 1999).

Range of Abies alba (Atlas Florae Europaeae 1998).

Many good photographs can be seen at Botany.cz.

Abies alba

Miller 1768

Common Names

European or common silver fir (Silba 1986), abeto (Spanish).

Taxonomic notes

Syn. A. pardei Gaussen (Silba 1986).

Description

Tree up to 45-55 m. tall and 200-260 cm dbh, with a long clear bole surmounted by a pyramidal crown that becomes flat-topped with age. Bark smooth, gray, scaly, with resin blisters. Branches grooved, pale brown or dull gray with a blackish pubescence. Leaves: Shade foliage 2-ranked, spreading horizontally; foliage in sun more or less erect. Needle base twisted, apex notched or rounded; 15-30 × 1.5-2 mm; upper surface dark shiny green and grooved, usually lacking stomata; lower surface glaucous to whitish-green, keeled , with stomata in 5-8 ranks. Buds pale brown to reddish-brown, ovoid with an obtuse apex, sometimes resinous, diameter 8-11 mm, slightly pubescent. Pollen cones blue/violet/red, 1-3 cm long. Seed cones cylindrical, attenuate at the ends, 10-16 × 3-5 cm, green when young, turning red-brown; cone scales spathulate, finely pubescent with exserted, reflexed bracts extending about 2/3 the length of the scale. Seeds obovoid, reddish, winged, up to 2.5 cm long (Silba 1986).

Range

France; Italy; Switzerland; Germany; Austria; Bulgaria; Ukraine: Karpaty Mts.; Byelorussia; at 300-1950 m. (Silba 1986, Vladimir Dinets e-mail 1998.01.02); Croatia.

Big Tree

Here are some reported large trees:

Height 59 m, dbh >320 cm, Chernaya Tisa River, Karpatsky National Reserve (Ukraine?) (Vladimir Dinets e-mail 1998.01.02).
Height 45 m, dbh 296 cm, at Strone House, Strathclyde, Great Britain (Mitchell et al. 1990).
Height 50 m, dbh 201, at Raehills, Dumfries & Galloway, Great Britain (Mitchell et al. 1990).
Height 65 m, in the “Peručica” forest in “Sutjeska” national park in Bosnia, near the border with Montenegro (Botany.cz, accessed 2009.05.02).
Height 68 m, diameter 380 cm, wood volume of 140 m³ in the Black Forest of Germany (historical record) (Botany.cz, accessed 2009.05.02).
Height 50 m, diameter 207 cm, wood volume of 65.3 m³. This was the famous Prince Joseph's Silver Fir in the Bohemian Forest near the city "Vyšší Brod." It died about 1839 (Botany.cz, accessed 2009.05.02).

Oldest

A tree-ring chronology covering 411 years, presumably based on living tree material, was collected in 1952 in Bayerischer Wald, Germany (48.75° N, 13.00° E) by B. Becker (Data accessed at the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program Tree-Ring Data Search Page, 1999.02.24. URL: http://julius.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ftp-treering.html).

Dendrochronology

Rolland (1993) did an exploratory study; the Bibliography of Dendrochronology provides some 290 additional citations (as of 2006), dating back to 1842, which is interesting (because dendrochronology was officially invented in about 1905) - unfortunately, there are none in English until 1956.

Ethnobotany

Foliar loppings of European silver fir in Czechoslovakia have yielded 1,380 tonnes/year of essential oils (Cermak and Penka 1979).

Observations

Remarks

Citations

Cermak, J. and M. Penka. 1979. An attempt to estimate potential production of volatile terpenes from the logging by-products of silver fir (Abies alba Mill.). Planta Medica 36: 3, 252.

Farjon (1990) provides a detailed account, with illustrations.

Rolland, C. 1993. Tree-ring and climate relationships for Abies alba in the internal Alps. Tree-Ring Bulletin 53:1-11. Available online at www.treeringsociety.org/TRBTRR/TRBvol53_1-11.pdf, accessed 2006.06.05.