Grand fir (Abies grandis): what the agencies record

This page reports what US federal publications say about one tree. It does not identify trees from descriptions or photos and does not say what should be done with any tree. The family overview, tree species in the agency records, explains the sources and holds the comparison table. Other true firs have their own pages, for example balsam fir and white fir.

At a glance

Item	What the source records
Scientific name	Abies grandis (Douglas ex D. Don) Lindl., pine family (PLANTS and Silvics)
Other names, Silvics	Lowland white fir, balsam fir and yellow fir
Native status, USDA PLANTS	Native in Canada and the lower 48 states
Size and age, Silvics	One tree on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington measures 200 cm (78.9 in) in diameter and 70.4 m (231 ft) tall; trees 250 years old are common and occasional trees pass 300 years
Green weight of the wood, NRS-38	45 lb per cubic foot, without bark

Native range and climate

The Silvics of North America handbook (Agriculture Handbook 654, Volume 1, 1990) says grand fir grows in stream bottoms, valleys and mountain slopes of the northwestern United States and southern British Columbia, between latitudes 51 and 39 degrees north. On the Pacific coast it grows on the lee side of Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland, in the interior valleys and lowlands of western Washington and Oregon, and in northwestern California as far south as Sonoma County. In the interior the range runs from the Okanogan and Kootenay Lakes in southern British Columbia south through eastern Washington, northern Idaho, western Montana west of the Continental Divide and northeastern Oregon. The handbook places the best commercial stands in the Nez Perce and Clearwater regions of northern Idaho and the largest trees in the rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula.

Silvics describes grand fir as found on a wide variety of sites. Annual precipitation runs from 510 to more than 2,540 mm (20 to 100 in) in western Washington and on Vancouver Island, and 360 to 990 mm (14 to 39 in) in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, with most of it in winter and generally 15 to 25 percent in the May to August growing season. Average annual snowfall ranges from a few centimeters on some coastal sites to more than 1,270 cm (500 in) in interior mountains.

Cones, seed and growth

The handbook says grand fir is monoecious, with female flowers standing erect on the uppermost part of the crown and male flowers hanging below them, an arrangement that favors cross-fertilization. Flowering runs from late March to mid-May at lower coastal elevations and in June at higher inland elevations; the cones, mostly yellowish green, ripen from August to September of the same year and seed is dispersed "approximately 1 month later" in the handbook's words. Seed production begins at 20 years of age. Several insect species feed on the buds, conelets and seed, sometimes destroying 10 to 25 percent of a year's seed crop.

Silvics describes rapid early height growth nearly equal to Douglas-fir on the Pacific coast and western white pine in Idaho, with growth of 79 to 89 cm (31 to 35 in) a year reported on Vancouver Island and western Washington sites and trees 43 m (141 ft) tall measured at 50 years. Heights on mature sites vary: 43 to 61 m (140 to 200 ft) on optimum coastal lowland sites, 35 to 46 m (115 to 151 ft) in northern Idaho, and 15 to 21 m (49 to 69 ft) on exposed ridges of the Inland Empire. The handbook says the root system is intermediate among associated species: the taproot is slower and shallower than ponderosa pine or Douglas-fir but faster and deeper than western hemlock or western redcedar, and on moist sites it is largely replaced by shallow lateral roots. It also reports grand fir planted successfully in many European countries, with growth at 40 years in England frequently equaling or exceeding Sitka spruce, Norway spruce and Douglas-fir.

Wood

The Wood Handbook (FPL-GTR-282, 2021) lists grand fir among six commercial western true firs, cut for lumber mainly in Washington, Oregon, California, western Montana and northern Idaho and marketed as white fir across the United States. It says the wood of the western true firs cannot be told apart by species from the wood alone, and is light in weight with shrinkage that is low to moderately high. Lumber is used for building construction, boxes and crates, planing-mill products, sashes, doors and general millwork, and in house construction for framing, subflooring and sheathing. Silvics calls the soft white wood a valued source of pulpwood and adds that it is commercially valuable as timber even though weaker and more prone to decay than many species, and that the foliage makes grand fir one of the preferred Christmas tree species in the Northwest.

Wood Handbook figure	Green	At 12% moisture content
Specific gravity (Table 5-3b)	0.35	0.37
Modulus of rupture, lbf per square inch (Table 5-3b)	5,800	8,900
Side hardness, lbf (Table 5-3b)	360	490

The green weight is in the NRS-38 table, the same figure used in the log weight calculator.

Damaging agents the handbook names

Heart rot. Silvics says susceptibility to heart rot and decay is one of the more important factors for grand fir. Indian paint fungus is called the most destructive fungus in forests east of the Cascade crest, and the handbook says decay accounted for losses of 14 percent of gross merchantable cubic-foot volume and 33 percent of board-foot volume in sawtimber-size grand fir in the Blue Mountains of Oregon and Washington. It ties centers of decay to logging scars, frost cracks, broken tops and other injuries, and says the fungus is rare west of the Cascade crest.
Root rots. Armillaria and Phellinus weiri are the two most important root rot fungi named.
Insects. The western spruce budworm and Douglas-fir tussock moth have caused widespread defoliation, top kill and mortality. The western balsam bark beetle and the fir engraver are the principal bark beetles. Fir cone moths, cone maggots and seed chalcids destroy many cones and seeds. The balsam woolly adelgid has destroyed grand fir in western Oregon and Washington and is called a serious threat in southwestern British Columbia; see the balsam woolly adelgid page.
Weather and fire. The handbook rates grand fir medium in fire resistance: less than thick-barked western larch, ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir, more than subalpine fir, western hemlock and Engelmann spruce. Needles have been exposed to minus 55 degrees C (minus 67 degrees F) without damage. Frost cracks and lightning scars appear more often than on its associates in the Inland Empire, and snow accumulation in the crowns of dense immature stands sometimes uproots or breaks small patches of trees.

For who takes reports of regulated pests, see reporting a pest in the United States, and pests and diseases by country sets out which ones agencies regulate.