Distribution. Only in a narrow belt a few miles long on the coast near the mouth of the Soledad River just north of San Diego and on the island of Santa Rosa, California; the least widely distributed Pine-tree of the United States.
Now planted in the parks of San Diego, California, and in New Zealand, growing rapidly in cultivation, and promising to attain a much larger size than on its native cliffs.
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.