Description:
The white fir has a fairly modest distribution reaching from the California and Oregon mountains to the Rockies, with a few disjunct clusters on some of the High Desert mountain ranges. It typically adorns the mid-elevations, associating with the upper populations of the ponderosa pine, yet below the alpine species, such as whitebark pine or Engelmann spruce.
The tallest specimens grow up to 150-200’. They have conical crowns and stiff, horizontal branches. The needles curve upwards, which helps differentiate them from the related grand fir, which has flatter needles extending horizontally straight out from the limbs. Their proportioned appearance reminds me of the archetypal Christmas tree.
They are divided into two sub-species. The ones residing in California are Abies concolor var. lowiana, the ones in the Rockies and Nevada are Abies concolor var. concolor. They also hybridize with the grand fir over a great breadth of Oregon, particularly in the southwest, and high desert mountains. The hybrids I have seen seem to have the flatter needles over most of the tree like the grand fir, whereas the needles near the top of the tree curve up, more like the white fir.
Personal Observations:
I have walked through great assemblages of them in the Sierra and California coast ranges (in the taller mountains such as Snow Mountain). They also extend over the Sierra, around Lake Tahoe, into slopes that drain into the Great Basin.
The most isolated group of them that I had the privilege of seeing was in the Ruby Mountains of eastern Nevada. It was a very small population, that was isolated from both the Rocky Mountain and Sierra species. I had to get special permission to hike through private lands, then bushwhack through tick-infested brush in Seitz Canyon to find them. I was able to GPS them to create an accurate distribution map.
I also spotted them in two areas of central-eastern Nevada; the Mount Moriah Wilderness Area, and the Great Basin National Park. They occupied the mid elevations of these mountains, usually above the ponderosa pine, and below the Engelmann spruce.