Abies cephalonica
Abies cephalonica, commonly known as Greek fir or Cephalonian fir, is a fir native to the mountains of Greece, primarily in the Peloponnesos and the island of Kefallonia, intergrading with the closely related Bulgarian fir further north in the Pindus mountains of northern Greece. It is a medium-size evergreen coniferous tree growing to – rarely – tall and with a trunk diameter of up to. It occurs at elevations of, on mountains with a rainfall of over.
The leaves are needle-like, flattened, long and wide by thick, glossy dark green above, and with two blue-white bands of stomata below. The tip of the leaf is pointed, usually fairly sharply but sometimes with a blunt tip, particularly on slow-growing shoots on older trees. The cones are long and broad, with about 150–200 scales, each scale with an exserted bract and two winged seeds; they disintegrate when mature to release the seeds.
It is also closely related to Nordmann fir to the east in northern Turkey.
Ecology
Greek fir is near-endemic to the Pindus Mountains mixed forests ecoregion, where, along with black pine and Balkan fir, it is a dominant tree in conifer forests from 1,200 to 2,500 meters elevation, and is less common in broadleaf mixed oak forests at lower elevations.In recent years, stress from prolonged drought and higher temperatures have made trees vulnerable to predation by wood-boring beetles of subfamily Scolytinae, which disrupt the trees' ability to transport water and nutrients from roots to branches and can kill trees. Greek fir die-offs have been reported in the Peloponnesos, Ionian Islands, and the mountains of the Greek mainland.