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Abies alba
Also called European Silver Fir, Christmastree, White Fir, Common Silver Fir
Abies alba is a large evergreen conifer of European mountains, reaching 40 to 50 m, and is grown mainly as a Christmas tree and forest timber tree. It needs cool, humid conditions and high rainfall to thrive.
Abies alba, the European silver fir or silver fir, is a fir native to the mountains of Europe, from the Pyrenees north to Normandy, east to the Alps and the Carpathians, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and south to Italy, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Albania and northern Greece.
In Roman times the wood was used to make wooden casks to store and transport wine and other substances. These were often recycled to make writing tablets.
A resinous essential oil can be extracted. This pine-scented oil is used in perfumes, bath products, and aerosol inhalants. Its branches (including the leaves, bark and wood) were used for production of spruce beer.
The bark and wood of silver fir are rich in antioxidative polyphenols. Six phenolic acids were identified (gallic, homovanillic, protocatechuic, p-hydroxybenzoic, vanillic and p-coumaric), three flavonoids (catechin, epicatechin and catechin tetramethyl ether) and eight lignans (taxiresinol, 7-(2-methyl-3,4-dihydroxytetrahydropyran-5-yloxy)-taxiresinol, secoisolariciresinol, lariciresinol, hydroxymatairesinol, isolariciresinol, matairesinol and pinoresinol).
The extract from the trunk was shown to prevent atherosclerosis in guinea pigs and to have cardioprotective effect in isolated rat hearts. Silver fir wood extract was found to reduce the post-prandial glycemic response (concentration of sugar in the blood after the meal) in healthy volunteers.
Silver fir is an important component species in the dinaric calcareous block fir forest in the western Balkan Peninsula.
Pacific Silver Fir · Balsam Fir · White Fir · Fraser fir · Nikko Fir · Korean Fir · Caucasian Fir · Algerian Fir · Spanish Fir · Noble Fir · Oyamel Fir · Siberian Fir
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Abies alba by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
