Flaky Fir

The timber is used for construction, furniture, and wood pulp.

Trees to 40 m tall; trunk to 1 m d.b.h.; bark of trunk breaking into square, rough plates, inner bark red when fresh, bark of young trees and 4th-year branchlets exfoliating into irregularly papery scales (like that of Betula). Branchlets brown, turning brownish gray in 2nd or 3rd year, ± pubescent or glabrous; winter buds globose, resinous. Leaves densely arranged, ascending on upper side of branchlets, spreading in 2 lateral sets on lower side, dark green adaxially, linear, ± falcate, 1.5-3 cm × ca. 2 mm, stomatal lines in 2 white bands separated by midvein abaxially, 3-15 near apex adaxially (where incomplete), resin canals 2, median or almost marginal in young leaves, apex acute or obtuse. Seed cones subsessile, erect, black or violet-brown at maturity, shortly cylindric or narrowly ovoid, 5-8 × 2.5-3.5 cm. Seed scales at middle of cones almost reniform, ca. 1.3 × 1.5 cm, apex thickened. Bracts slightly exserted, obovate-cuneate, 1-1.4 cm, distal margin erose-denticulate, apex rounded or slightly emarginate, cusp recurved or straight. Seeds oblong-cuneate, ca. 5 mm; wing as long as seed.

S Gansu, S Qinghai, W and N Sichuan, SE Xizang

* Mountains; 3000-4700 m.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Abies squamata.

Abies squamata is a species of conifer in the family Pinaceae. This fir is common in the Southeast of the Tibetan Plateau (China) in an altitude from 3200 m to tree-line in 4400 m. It is dominant on North-facing slopes and often grows with Balfour's spruce, Picea balfouriana. Government sector logging that was rampant until the logging ban in 1998 reduced fir stands significantly. Reforestation after the ban was dominated by spruce, since Abies squamata is susceptible to stem rot and thus shunned by the state forest bureaus (Ryavec & Winkler 2009). Undergrowth is most commonly dominated by members of the genus Rhododendron. Local Tibetans know this fir as "bollo", but that term is a general term for firs and spruces.