Abies borisii regis description

Range of Abies borisii regis (4).

Abies borisii regis Mattford 1925

Common Names

Boris fir, Bulgarian fir, Macedonian fir (1).

Taxonomic notes

Syn: A. alba var. acutifolia Turrill; A. alba ssp. acutifolia (Turrill) Fukarek.

Vidakovik (1) considers the taxon "of hybrid character and as such is a transitional type between A. alba and A. cephalonica" (1). Conversely, Adinolfi (2) reports: "Some months ago I met Dr. Arsen Proko from Tirana University. He showed me slides about Abies borisii regis. He doesn't think it is an hybrid. This abies has a particular character which isn't in Abies alba and in Abies cephalonica. If you cut a tree there will be suckers [perhaps sprouts?] from the stump."

Description

Tree: Up to 30 m tall (1).
Shoots: When young, light yellow with dense, short hairs (1).
Leaves: Acuminate, occasionally with rounded or notched apex, up to 3 cm long, densely arranged, without stomata on the upper surface, and with 2 white stomata bands on the lower surface (1).
Cones: Cylindrical to conical, 15 cm long (1).
Cone scales: Short tomentose, 3-3.5 cm wide; bract scales reflexed and exserted (1).

Range

N Greece, Albania, S Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia (1, 2). "Its distribution in Greece ... is indicated by Panetsos as a transitional type. Its altitudinal distribution ranges from 700 to 1500 m" (1).

Big Tree

Oldest

A tree-ring chronology covering 170 years, presumably based on living tree material, was collected in 1996 at Panetolikon-Oro, Greece (1350 m elevation, 38° 43'N, 21° 40' E) by F.H. Schweingruber (3). Very few collections of this species are recorded and substantially older trees may occur.

Dendrochronology

Ethnobotany

Observations

Remarks

" Popnikola (1974) studied the variation in anatomical structure of fir needles from Macedonia. Clinal variation could not be distinctly established on the basis of his investigations, but Popnikola (1971) found great variation in colour and size of male flowers as well as in pollen size of fir from Macedonia. Variation does exist between and within populations" (1).

Citations

(1) Vidakovic 1991.
(2) E-mail message from Pietro Paolo Adinolfi, 11-Jan-1998.
(3) Data accessed at the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program Tree-Ring Data Search Page, 24-Feb-1999. URL: http://julius.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ftp-treering.html.
(4) Atlas Florae Europaeae 1998.

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This page is from the Gymnosperm Database
URL: http://www.geocities.com/~earlecj/ab/borisii_regis.htm
Edited by Christopher J. Earle
E-mail:earlecj@earthlink.com
Last modified on 17-May-1999