Abies firma, the Momi Fir, is a species of fir

Fir

Firs are a genus of 48–55 species of evergreen conifers in the family Pinaceae. They are found through much of North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, occurring in mountains over most of the range...

 native to central and southern Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, growing at low to moderate altitudes of 50-1600 m.

Abies firma is a medium-sized to large evergreen

Evergreen

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...

 coniferous

Pinophyta

The conifers, division Pinophyta, also known as division Coniferophyta or Coniferae, are one of 13 or 14 division level taxa within the Kingdom Plantae. Pinophytes are gymnosperms. They are cone-bearing seed plants with vascular tissue; all extant conifers are woody plants, the great majority being...

 tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

 growing to 50 m tall and 2 m in trunk diameter, with a broad conical crown of straight branches rising at an angle of about 20° above horizontal. The bark

Bark

Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner...

 is scaly grey-brown, with resin blisters on young trees. The shoots are grooved, buff to grey-brown, glabrous or finely pubescent. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 ("needles") are flattened, 2-5 cm long and 2-4 mm broad, spread at nearly right angles from the shoot; the apex is sharp, bifid (double-pointed) on the leaves of young trees, single-pointed on mature trees. They are bright green above, and greyish-green below with two broad stoma

Stoma

In botany, a stoma is a pore, found in the leaf and stem epidermis that is used forgas exchange. The pore is bordered by a pair of specialized parenchyma cells known as guard cells that are responsible for regulating the size of the opening...

tal bands. The cones

Conifer cone

A cone is an organ on plants in the division Pinophyta that contains the reproductive structures. The familiar woody cone is the female cone, which produces seeds. The male cones, which produce pollen, are usually herbaceous and much less conspicuous even at full maturity...

 are 7-15 cm long by 3-5 cm wide, green maturing yellow-brown, tapering to a 2-3 cm broad bluntly rounded apex. The scale bracts are exserted 3-6 mm, triangular. The seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s are 7-9 mm long with a wedge-shaped wing 1.5 cm long, are released after the cones disintegrate at maturity in October.

Momi Fir is sometimes, but not commonly, used as an ornamental tree, particularly in warm temperate regions with hot, humid summers such as the southeastern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

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