Abies veitchii Seeds | Veitch’s Fir
LATIN NAME: Abies veitchii
COMMON NAME: Veitch’s Fir
Plant Profile
Fir identification rests on the needles, and this species has two good marks: a flat needle with a distinctly notched tip, and two bright white stomatal bands beneath, one on each side of the midrib. Those bands are rows of stomata in wax-floored grooves, and they give the foliage its silvered look from below. On cone-bearing shoots the needles curve upward; on ordinary shoots they lie nearly flat in a comb.
Fir cones stand up on the branch rather than hanging, and they disintegrate where they stand. At maturity the scales fall away one by one and the winged seed spins out, leaving only the bare central axis spiking upward from the branch. That is the most reliable way to tell a fir from a spruce or a pine at a distance, and it explains why you rarely find a whole fir cone on the ground.
The oleoresin from the bark blisters is a mixture of diterpene acids and monoterpene solvents, and abietic acid, the compound the genus gave its name to, is the best known of the acid fraction. In the tree the resin seals wounds and bars microbes; in industry, resin acids of this type are the basis of rosin and of the sizing agents used in papermaking.
The species was described by John Lindley and named for John Gould Veitch, the youngest of the Veitch nursery dynasty, who collected plants in Japan in the 1860s and sent material back to Exeter. That is why a Japanese subalpine tree carries an English nurseryman’s name on the label, and why it reached Western gardens while much of the Japanese flora was still unrecorded.
Science & Biotechnology
Climb a Japanese mountain through the conifer belt and the firs change hands with altitude. Veitch’s fir holds the lower part of the subalpine zone and gives way to Maries’ fir higher up, near the limit where Betula ermanii forms the treeline. The two overlap across a band and trade dominance along the gradient, which makes these forests a classic place to study how conifers sort themselves out by altitude.
Fir foliage yields an essential oil on distillation, and across the genus the dominant constituents are bornyl acetate, camphene and the pinenes, with limonene in smaller amounts. Bornyl acetate carries a camphoraceous, pine-like note, and fir needle oil has been used as a fragrance material. Distilling it on a small scale means loading the still with fresh chopped needles rather than dried ones, because the monoterpenes are volatile and largely lost as the material dries.
Uses & Benefits
Abies wood is unusual among conifers in lacking normal resin canals: no channels run through the timber, and the wood is consequently light and pale, with hardly any odour. The resin is held instead in blisters in the bark, small swellings that burst when a trunk is wounded and release a clear oleoresin. The timber has traditionally been used where a resinous smell matters, such as for food boxes, and it is also pulped.
Growing from Seed
The upper species copes with deeper snow, a shorter season and harsher exposure; the lower one exploits the longer growing season available beneath it. In places the two grow in the same stand, and the boundary between them is not a line but a gradient that shifts with slope, aspect and snow depth.
Fir seed travels in the autumn as the cones break up, and it is short-lived, so sow it within a season of collection. Mix it with damp sand in a sealed bag and hold it cold through the winter, then sow onto a fine, free-draining medium in a shaded frame in spring, pressing the seed into the surface and covering it lightly. Water from below and keep the frame airy, then pot the seedlings on at their first lateral needles, in deep containers so the root can run straight.
Firs are pruned by candling: in spring, before the new shoots harden, pinch the soft growth candle by candle with your fingers and the plant thickens without the flat look of a clipped hedge. Space garden specimens five metres apart and forest plantings two to three metres, in a cool site with sharply drained soil, and mulch with leaf mould.
Our Take
This is not a fir for a hot, dry garden, but on a cool slope with deep soil it is one of the most beautiful conifers there is, and the silver underside of the foliage shows every time the wind turns a branch. The great risk is waterlogged ground, where Phytophthora root rot kills trees that looked healthy until they collapsed; adelgids build up on the shoots, and the rust that causes witch’s brooms distorts branches. Compare Japanese fir from lower elevations, Faber’s fir and Ernest’s fir. Japanese white pine suits a sheltered rock garden where space is short.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Veitch’s Fir often pair it with these related subjects: