Noble vs Silver Fir

[wnshall]

My latest self-assigned task is distinguishing the Silver Fir from the Noble. That and ID Engelmann Spruce.

I think this set of needles and trunk belong to a Noble Fir (I don't have a photo of the underside of the needles because my recollection is that they were green, or at least uniform, same coloring as top.):

Noble fir needles?

Noble Fir Bark?

One guidebooks says Nobles have "The needles are blue-green with bands of white on each side", while another says "bluish white bloom on all surfaces" (and says they have four sides.) I'm not sure the photo matches those descriptions, but I think these needles show the characteristic "hockey stick" shape. Also, the bark looks right.

I think this set of needles and trunk belong to a Silver Fir:

Silver Fir needles, top ?

Silver Fir needles, bottom?

Silver Fir Bark?

Needles are dark green above, with two white stripes below, like a Grand Fir, but needles don't sit as flat as GF. The bark looks scaley or patchy, which matches the photos I've seen.

The samples above were from two trees right next to each other, a few feet from a Mountain Hemlock (which I'm pretty sure I distinguished from these.)

Is this bark also Silver Fir? Something else?

mystery bark

finally, are these photos cones of the Mountain Hemlock, as I suspect, and not Engelmann Spruce?

cones

cones

[Bosterson]

I believe you're right about the firs: the first is certainly noble - it'd be most obvious in the bluish tight needle bunches that are cut off in the bottom of the pic where your fingers are. Noble needles are great - if you crush them in your fingers, they smell like mandarins!

Silver vs grand can sometimes be hard if the grand needles are hard to see or clump on the upper part of the twig, but that looks like silver. However I think your mystery bark is actually a mature noble.

Those cones must be the mountain hemlock (I've never seen them that fully open) because they're definitely not spruce - spruce cones are very papery feeling once they're dry and open, and the ends of the scales are flat. Spruces are pretty distinctive and easy to immediately ID, just like you can instantly ID a doug fir cone, though I don't know much about the cone difference between the individual spruce species.

I'd recommend referencing Bobcat's guide to tree bark!

viewtopic.php?p=211433#p211433

[wnshall]

Noble needles are great - if you crush them in your fingers, they smell like mandarins!

Interesting, I find it's Grand fir that smell like citrus.

Thanks for the link to Bobcat's bark guide; I'd seen that before but forgot about it.

[aiwetir]

Noble bark gets blocky like that when it's old. I'd say the mystery one is noble too