Pseudotsuga sinensis var. sinensis cone
Chinese Douglas-fir is a relative of the Pacific Northwest’s coast and Rocky Mountain Douglas-firs, Pseudotsuga menziesii subsp. menziesii and Pseudotsuga menziesii subsp. glauca. Unlike these North American Douglas-firs, though, its status is listed as “vulnerable”, like many of the plants that can be seen in the Asian Garden at UBC.
I promise that I’ll reverse this week’s colour trend on the weblog and ensure tomorrow’s entry is a colour other than green.
Photography / Entomology resource link: A lot of buzz on the web recently about the ingenuity required for Photographing Flying Insects.
Thanks for posting a picture of this rare tree. It’s interesting that while P. menziesii is such a dominant, ubiquitous, and familair tree, that the other members of the genus are rare and relatively unknown. For those interested in the genus Pseudotsuga in North America, there is another species: P. macrocarpa is found on chaparral slopes, canyon bottoms, and mixed-conifer forests in southern California, but its range doesn’t quite overlap with its more well-known cousin. Ron Lanner provides an excellent description of this species in his book “Conifers of California.”