Abies alba

European silver fir is in the pine or Pinaceae family and is native to the mountains of Europe, from the Pyrenees north to Normandy, east to the Alps and the Carpathians, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and south to Italy, Bulgaria, Albania and northern Greece. It can reach a height of 50 m. Crown is pyramidal, becoming flat-topped with age.

• Needles are 2–3 cm long and 2 mm wide, flat, glossy dark green above, and with two greenish-white bands of stomata below (thus displaying a more whitish underside); tips of the needles are usually slightly notched. Needles twist from around the twigs to point upward.
• Needles are attached to the twig by a base resembling a small suction cup (as opposed to spruce needles which are mounted on short stems).
• The species is monoecious; pollen cones are blue/violet/red, 1–3 cm long; seed cones are cylindrical, slightly swelling in the mid-point 9–17 cm long and 3–4 cm broad, upright (unlike pendant spruce cones), green when immature, turning reddish-brown when mature; the scale bracts protrude 2/3 the length of the scales. Cones fragment when mature in late fall, disintegrating to release pairs of winged seeds from each scale.
• Buds pale brown to reddish-brown, ovoid with an obtuse apex, sometimes resinous. Bark on younger trees is smooth, grey, scaly, with resin blisters; on older trees, it darkens and develops scales and furrows at the base.