tkaverI the tamarack ii45 



At one time, it was under consideration to introduce larches into 

 the forests bordering the English lakes. Wordsworth was greatly 

 disturbed at this idea, and expressed his feeling in "A Description 

 oj the Scenery of the Lakes.'' declaring that it is impossible for trees 

 which terminate in a spike, like the tamarack, to blend together,' 

 and that if hundreds of thousands were added, the effect would be 

 the same. He further says, "As a tree it is less than any other 

 pleasing ; its branches (for boughs it has none) have no variety in 

 the youth of this tree, and little dignity even when it attains its full 

 growth; leaves it cannot be said to have, consequently it affords 

 neither shade nor shelter. In spring, the larch becomes green long 

 before the native trees, and its green is so peculiar and vivid that, 

 finding nothing to harmonize with it, wherever it comes forth a 

 disagreeable spark is produced. In summer, when all other trees 

 are in their pride, it is of a dingy hfeless hue; in autumn, of a 

 spiritless unvaried yellow, and in winter it is still more lamentably 

 distinguished from every other deciduous tree of the forest, for 

 they seem only to sleep, but the larch appears absolutely dead." 



However, we do not all hold the same opinion of the larch, as we 

 may easily see by the following extract from Pankhurst:^ — ^"With 

 its luxuriant and needle-like fohage and pendant branchlets, it is 

 exceedingly effective in a dense cluster. While it suggests the 

 spruce, it has none of its austerity. 



The leaves, an inch long and slender as a needle, grow in dense 

 clusters as in the cedars of Lebanon. Its deciduous growth and 

 cone-bearing propensities, showing that it stands on the dividing 

 line between two opposing orders of vegetation, give our anti- 

 evolutionist friend another hard nut to crack. The vaporous, 

 vivid green of a million-budded larch in spring is as beautiful in its 

 way as the bluebirds earhest call, and with it, becomes one of the 

 naturalist's memories and anticipations of that joyous season." 



Bryant also loved the larch in spring, for he wrote : — 

 "I know where the young May violet grows. 

 In its lone and lowly nook. 

 On the mossy bank,"^ where the larch-tree throws 

 Its broad, dark bough in solemn repose, 

 Far over the silent brook." 



True it is that in the first gushing, vernal days, when the skies 

 kiss the earth, the larches are sprinkled full of buds of rarest green" 

 — a wondrous sight to see on an early spring morning. Surely we 

 all love the beautiful larch in spring. 



