2. LARIX Adans. Larch.
Tall pyramidal trees, with thick sometimes furrowed scaly bark, heavy heartwood, thin pale sapwood, slender remote horizontal often pendulous branches, elongated leading branchlets, short thick spur-like lateral branchlets, and small subglobose buds, their inner scales accrescent and marking the lateral branchlets with prominent ring-like scars. Leaves awl-shaped, triangular and rounded above, or rarely 4-angled, spirally disposed and remote on leading shoots, on lateral branchlets in crowded fascicles, each leaf in the axil of a deciduous bud-scale, deciduous. Flowers solitary, terminal, the staminate globose, oval or oblong, sessile or stalked, on leafless branches, yellow, composed of numerous spirally arranged anthers with connectives produced above them into short points, the pistillate appearing with the leaves, short-oblong to oblong, composed of few or many green nearly orbicular stalked scales in the axes of much longer mucronate usually scarlet bracts. Fruit a woody ovoid-oblong conic or subglobose short-stalked cone composed of slightly thickened suborbicular or oblong-obovate concave scales, shorter or longer than their bracts, gradually decreasing from the centre to the ends of the cone, the small scales usually sterile. Seeds nearly triangular, rounded on the sides, shorter than their wings; the outer seed-coat crustaceous, light brown, the inner membranaceous, pale chestnut-brown and lustrous; cotyledons usually 6, much shorter than the inferior radicle.
Larix is widely distributed over the northern and mountainous region of the northern hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to the mountains of West Virginia and Oregon in the New World, and to central Europe, the Himalayas, Siberia, Korea, western China, and Japan in the Old World. Ten species are recognized. Of the exotic species the European Larix decidua, Mill., has been much planted for timber and ornament in the northeastern states, where the Japanese Larix Kœmpferi, Sarg., also flourishes.
Larix is the classical name of the Larch-tree.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES.
Cones small, subglobose; their scales few, longer than the bracts, leaves triangular.1. [L. laricina] (A, B, F). Cones elongated; their scales numerous, shorter than the bracts. Young branchlets pubescent, soon becoming glabrous; leaves triangular.2. [L. occidentalis] (B, G). Young branchlets tomentose; leaves 4-angled.3. [L. Lyallii] (B, F).
1. [Larix laricina] K. Koch. Tamarack. Larch.
Larix americana Michx.
Leaves linear, triangular, rounded above, prominently keeled on the lower surface, ¾′—1¼′ long, bright green, conspicuously stomatiferous when they first appear; turning yellow and falling in September or October. Flowers: male subglobose and sessile; female oblong, with light-colored bracts produced into elongated green tips, and nearly orbicular rose-red scales. Fruit on stout incurved stems, subglobose, rather obtuse, ½′—¾′ long, composed of about 20 scales slightly erose on their nearly entire margins, rather longer than broad and twice as long as their bracts, bright chestnut-brown at maturity; usually falling during their second year; seeds ⅛′ long, about one third as long as their light chestnut-brown wings broadest near the middle and obliquely rounded at apex.
A tree, 50°—60° high, with a trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, small horizontal branches forming during the early life of the tree a narrow regular pyramidal head always characteristic of this tree when crowded in the forest, or with abundant space sweeping out in graceful curves, often becoming contorted and pendulous and forming a broad open frequently picturesque head, and slender leading branchlets often covered at first with a glaucous bloom, becoming light orange-brown during their first winter and conspicuous from the small globose dark red lustrous buds. Bark ½′—¾′ thick, separating into thin closely appressed rather bright reddish brown scales. Wood heavy, hard, very strong, rather coarse-grained, very durable, light brown; largely used for the upper knees of small vessels, fence-posts, telegraph-poles, and railway-ties.
Distribution. At the north often on well-drained uplands, southward in cold deep swamps which it often clothes with forests of closely crowded trees, from Labrador to the Arctic Circle, ranging west of the Rocky Mountains to latitude 65° 35′ north, and southward through Canada and the northern states to northern and eastern Pennsylvania, Garrett County, Maryland (Oakland to Thayerville), and Preston County, West Virginia (Cranesville Swamp), northern Indiana and Illinois, and northeastern Minnesota; along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains to about latitude 53° and between the Yukon River and Cook Inlet, Alaska (Larix alaskensis Wight.); very abundant in the interior of Labrador, where it is the largest tree; common along the margins of the barren lands stretching beyond the sub-Arctic forest to the shores of the Arctic Sea; attaining its largest size north of Lake Winnipeg on low benches which it occasionally covers with open forests; on the eastern slopes of the northern Rocky Mountains usually at elevation from 600°—1700° above the sea; rare and local toward the southern limits of its range.
Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree in the northeastern states, growing rapidly and attaining in cultivation a large size and picturesque habit.
2. [Larix occidentalis] Nutt. Tamarack.
Leaves triangular, rounded on the back, conspicuously keeled below, rigid, sharp-pointed, 1′—1¾′ long, about 1/32′ wide, light pale green, turning pale yellow early in the autumn. Flowers: male short-oblong; female oblong, nearly sessile, with orbicular scales and bracts produced into elongated tips. Fruit oblong, short-stalked, 1′—1½′ long, with numerous thin stiff scales nearly entire and sometimes a little reflexed on their margins, much shorter than their bracts, more or less thickly coated on the lower surface below the middle with hoary tomentum, and standing after the escape of the seeds at right angles to the axis of the cone, or often becoming reflexed; seeds nearly ¼′ long, with a pale brown shell, one half to two thirds as long as the thin fragile pale wings broadest near the middle and obliquely rounded at apex.
A tree, sometimes 180° high, with a tall tapering naked trunk 6°—8° in diameter, or on dry soil and exposed mountain slopes usually not more than 100° tall, with a short narrow pyramidal head of small branches clothed with scanty foliage, or occasionally with a larger crown of elongated drooping branches, stout branchlets covered when they first appear with soft pale pubescence, usually soon glabrous, bright orange-brown in their first year, ultimately becoming dark gray-brown, and dark chestnut-brown winter-buds about ⅛′ in diameter. Bark of young stems thin, dark-colored and scaly, becoming near the base of old trunks 5′ or 6′ thick and broken into irregularly shaped oblong plates often 2° long and covered with thin closely appressed light cinnamon-red scales. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard and strong, close-grained, very durable in contact with the soil, bright light red, with thin nearly white sapwood; largely used for railway-ties and fence-posts, and manufactured into lumber used in cabinet-making and the interior finish of buildings.
Distribution. Moist bottom-lands and on high benches and dry mountain sides generally at elevations between 2000° and 7000° above sea-level, usually singly or in small groves, through the basin of the upper Columbia River from southern British Columbia to the western slopes of the continental divide of northern Montana, and to the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains of Washington and northern Oregon; most abundant and of its largest size on the bottom-lands of streams flowing into Flat Head Lake in northern Montana, and in northern Idaho.
Occasionally planted in the eastern states and in Europe, but in cultivation showing little promise of attaining a large size or becoming a valuable ornamental or timber-tree.
3. [Larix Lyallii] Parl. Tamarack.
Leaves 4-angled, rigid, short-pointed, pale blue-green, 1′—1½′ long. Flowers: male short-oblong; female ovoid-oblong, with dark red or occasionally pale yellow-green scales and dark purple bracts abruptly contracted into elongated slender tips. Fruit ovoid, rather acute, 1½′—2′ long, subsessile or raised on a slender stalk coated with hoary tomentum, with dark reddish purple or rarely green erose scales, fringed and covered on their lower surface with matted hairs at maturity spreading nearly at right angles and finally much reflexed, much shorter than their dark purple very conspicuous long-tipped bracts; seeds full and rounded on the sides, ⅛′ long and about half as long as their light red lustrous wings broadest near the base with nearly parallel sides.
A tree, usually 25°—50° high, with a trunk generally 18′—20′ but rarely 3°—4° in diameter, and remote elongated exceedingly tough persistent branches sometimes pendulous, developing very irregularly and often abruptly ascending at the extremities, stout branchlets coated with hoary tomentum usually persistent until after their second winter, ultimately becoming nearly black, and prominent winter-buds with conspicuous long white matted hairs fringing the margins of their scales and often almost entirely covering the bud. Bark of young trees and of the branches thin, rather lustrous, smooth, and pale gray tinged with yellow, becoming loose and scaly on larger stems and on the large branches of old trees, and on fully grown trunks ½′—¾′ thick and slightly divided by shallow fissures into irregularly shaped plates covered by thin dark-red brown loosely attached scales. Wood heavy, hard, coarse-grained, light reddish brown.
Distribution. Near the timber-line on mountain slopes at elevations of 4000°—8000°, from southern Alberta on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and from the interior of southern British Columbia, southward along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains of northern Washington to Mt. Stewart at the head of the north fork of the Yakima River, and along the continental divide to the middle fork of Sun River, Montana, forming here a forest of considerable size at elevations of 7000°—8000°, and on the Bitter Root Mountains to the headwaters of the south fork of the Clearwater River, Idaho.