Common Names

Taxonomic notes

Description

Range

"The range of Douglas-fir is fairly continuous through northern Idaho, western Montana, and northwestern Wyoming. Several outliers are present in Alberta and the eastern-central parts of Montana and Wyoming, the largest being in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. In northeastern Oregon, and from southern Idaho south through the mountains of Utah, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, extreme western Texas, and northern Mexico, the distribution becomes discontinuous.

"Douglas-fir grows under a wide variety of climatic conditions [see Table, below] ... In the northern Rocky Mountains, Douglas-fir grows in a climate with a marked maritime influence. Mild continental climate prevails in all seasons, except midsummer. Precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year, except for a dry period in July and August. In the central Rocky Mountains, the climate is continental. Winters are long and severe; summers are hot and in some parts of the region, very dry. Annual precipitation, higher on the western sides of the mountains, is mainly snow. Rainfall patterns for the southern Rocky Mountains generally show low winter precipitation east of the Continental Divide but high precipitation during the growing season. West of the Continental Divide, the rainfall is more evenly divided between winter and summer. Frost may occur in any month in the northern part of the range. Length of frost-free periods, however, varies within the central and southern Rocky Mountain regions, even at the same elevations.

"Soils within the range of Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir originated from a considerable array of parent materials. In south-central British Columbia, eastern Washington, and northern Idaho, soils vary from basaltic talus to deep bess with volcanic ash to thin residual soil over granitic or sedimentary rocks. They are mostly Vitrandepts and Xerochrepts. Parent materials in Montana and Wyoming consist of both igneous and sedimentary rocks, and locally of glacial moraines. Soils derived from noncalcareous substrates are variable in texture but consistently gravelly and acidic. A significant portion of the sedimentary rocks is limestone, which gives rise to neutral or alkaline soils ranging in texture from gravelly loams to gravelly silts. Limestones often weather into soils that are excessively well drained. Soils are Cryoboralfs of the order Alfisols, and Cryandepts and Cryochrepts of the order Inceptisols. Soils in the central and southern Rocky Mountains are very complex. They developed from glacial deposits, crystalline granitic rocks, conglomerates, sandstones, and, in the Southwest, limestones. These soils are Alfisols (Gray Wooded soils), Mollisols (Brown Forest soils), Spodosols (Brown Podzolic soils, Podzols), and Entisols (Alexander 1974, Pfister et al. 1977).

"Generally, the variety glauca grows at considerably higher altitudes than the coastal variety of comparable latitude. ... The inland variety grows at elevations from 550 to 2440 m (1,800 to 8,000 ft) in the northern part of its range. In the central Rocky Mountains, Douglas-fir grows mostly at elevations between 1830 and 2590 m (6,000 and 8,000 ft), and in the southern Rocky Mountains, between 2440 and 2900 m (8,000 and 9,500 ft). In some localities in southern and central Arizona, Douglas-fir may be found as low as 1550 m (5,100 ft) in canyon bottoms. The highest elevation at which Douglas-fir grows in the Rocky Mountains is 3260 m (10,700 ft) on the crest of Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona.

"Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir grows in extensive pure stands, uneven- and even-aged, in southern Idaho and northern Utah and in western Montana as a broad belt between ponderosa pine and spruce fir zones. At high elevations or northerly latitudes, more cold-tolerant mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), true firs (Abies spp.), Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii), western white pine (Pinus monticola), and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) gradually replace Douglas-fir. ...

"Wherever Douglas-fir grows in mixture with other species, the proportion may vary greatly, depending on aspect, elevation, kind of soil, and the past history of an area, especially as it relates to fire. This is particularly true of the mixed conifer stands in the southern Rocky Mountains where Douglas-fir is associated with ponderosa pine, southwestern white pine (Pinus strobiformis), corkbark fir (Abies lasiocarpa var. arizonica), white fir (Abies concolor), blue spruce (Picea pungens), Engelmann spruce, and aspen (Populus spp.).

"Principal understory species associated with variety glauca differ within its range (Alexander 1985). In the northern part, they are common snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus), white spirea (Spirea betulifolia), ninebark (Physocarpus malvaceus), and pachistima (Pachistima myrsinites). In the central part, they are true mountain-mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus), squaw currant (Ribes cereum), chokeberry (Prunus virginiana), big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), western serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia), and bush rockspirea (Holodiscus dumosus); in the southern part they are New Mexico locust (Robinia neomexicana), Rocky Mountain maple (Acer glabrum), and oceanspray (Alexander 1985)" (4).

Table 1—Climatic data for [three] regional subdivisions of the range of [Rocky Mountain] Douglas-fir (Baldwin 1973, U.S. Department of Commerce 1957).

Table quoted verbatim from: Burns & Honkala 1990.

Big Tree

Oldest

Dendrochronology

Ethnobotany

Observations

Remarks

Citations

See also
MacKinnon et al. 1992.
FEIS database.

This page is from the Gymnosperm Database
URL: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/2285/pi/ps/glauca.htm
Edited by Christopher J. Earle
E-mail:earlecj@earthlink.com
Last modified on 15-Feb-1999