Delavay's Fir                         A-bez del-uh-VAY-ee (del-AV-a-i)

• Conifer, evergreen tree, to about 80 ft (25 m) tall, crown pyramidal; bark gray-brown, rough.   Leaves (needles) spirally arranged, radially, more or less pointing forward, sometimes arranged in 2 lateral sets, linear, often curved or "S"-shaped, flattened, 15-30 mm × about 2 mm, bright dark green, stomatal lines in 2 white bands on the underside, margin typically revolute (rolled under), apex emarginate (notched).  Seed cones at first purplish, black at maturity, cylindric or ovoid-cylindric, 6-11 × 3-4 cm.
• Hardy to USDA Zone 5         Native to parts of India (Arunachal Pradesh), Myanmar, Vietnam and China.
• There has been, and still is, much taxonomic confusion regarding Abies delavayi, at one time it was more or less a catch-all term for several Chinese firs.
• delavayi: named after Abbe Pierre Jean Marie Delavay (1834-1895), who traveled extensively in China in 1887 and discovered the species on the summit of Tsang-shan, near Tali, in northwest Yunnan in April 1887 (Jacobson, 1996)
• Federal Way, Washington: Rhododendron Species and Botanical Garden