** 



8 SILVA OF NORTE AMERICA. conifek^. 



H 



Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2, 99. — Sudworth, Eep. State Board Forestry /\\ul(}^ {Cone-Bearers of Calif or- 



U. S. Dept. Agric, 1892, 330. — Britton & Brown, III. ma) (1890). 



Flor, i. 54, f. 120. Larix laricina, var. pendula, Lemmon, Rep. California 



Larix laricina, var. microcarpa, Lemmon, Bep. California State Board Forestry, iii. 108 {Cone-Bearers of Califor- 



nia) (1890). 



A tree, from fifty to sixty feet in height, with a trunk eighteen or twenty inches in diameter, but 

 often much smaller toward the northern and southern limits of its range. During its early years the 

 slender horizontal branches form a narrow regular pyramidal head, which continues to characterize this 

 tree when it is crowded by its associates in the forest ; but where it can obtain abundant light and air 

 some of the specialized upper branches grow more vigorously than the others and than those below 

 them and sweep out in graceful curves, or often become much contorted and frequently pendulous and 

 form a broad open head which is sometimes extremely picturesque. The bark of the trunk is from 

 one half to three quarters of an inch in thickness, and separates into thin closely appressed rather 

 bright reddish brown scales. The slender leading branchlets are glabrous in their first summer and 

 are often covered with a glaucous bloom ; during the following winter they are light orange-brown 

 and conspicuous from the small globose dark red lustrous buds; during their second season they 

 gradually grow darker, and in the third and fourth years become dark brown and dingy and begin to 

 lose the spur-like lateral branchlets. The leaves are triangular, rounded above, prominently keeled on 

 the lower surface, from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a quarter in length and about 

 one thirty-second of an inch in width ; they are bright green and conspicuously stomatif erous when they 

 first expand, which is from the beginning to the end of May, according as the tree grows at the south 

 or at the north, and, gradually becoming darker during the summer, they turn dull yellow in September 

 or October not long before they fall' The staminate flowers are subglobose and sessile, with pale yellow 

 anthers, and are principally borne on branchlets one or two years old. The pistillate flowers are 

 oblong and short-stalked, with light rose-colored bracts produced into elongated green tips and nearly 

 orbicular rose-red scales, and usually appear on branchlets from one to three years old. The cones 

 when they are fully grown and begin to open in the autumn are raised on stout incurved stems, 

 and are oblong, rather obtuse, and from one half to three quarters of an inch in length, and are 

 composed of about twenty scales; these are largest near the middle of the cone, diminishing toward its 

 extremities, and are very concave, slightly erose or nearly entire on the margins, semiorbieular but 

 usually rather longer than broad, and about twice as long as their bracts, which are emarginate and 

 furnished at the apex with short mucros; as the cone enlarges the scales gradually lose their red 

 color, and when fully grown are light bright chestnut-brown ; growing darker after their first winter, 

 during which they gradually scatter their seeds, they usuaUy fall. during their second year, although 

 occasionally a few cones remain on the branches through another season. The seeds are an eighth 

 of an inch in length, with a pale coat, and are about one third as long as the light chestnut-b^own 

 wings, which are broadest near the middle and obliquely rounded at. the apex. 



From about latitude 58" north, near the coast of Labrador, Larix Americana ranges northwestward 

 nearly to the southern shore of Ungava Bay ; the line which marks the northern limits of its range 

 then extends westward, and, turning toward the south, reaches the shore of Hudson Bay a few miles 

 south of the mouth of the Nastapoka Eiver,^ and from a point a little to the northwest of Port Churchill 

 on the western shore' of Hudson Bay, in latitude 59° north, extends northwestward to the northern 

 shores of Great Bear Lake, from which the Larch follows down the valley of the Mackenzie Eiver 

 nearly to latitude 67° 30' north.^ West of the Rocky Mountains Larix Americana ranges westward 



1 The attribution oi Lari. Americana east of Hudson Bay as ^ Richardson, Franklin Jour. Appx. No. 7, 752 (as Finns micro- 



here la,d down .s partly taken fron> Dr. Robert Bell's paper on carpa) ; Arctic SearcMng Exped. ii. 318 



hshed ,n the ScotUsk Geographcal Maganne, xlii. 283. Mackenzie and Yukon Rivers, in latitude 67° 30' north Lari. 



