CONIFERffl. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA 



11 



LARIX OCCIDENTALIS. 



Tamarack. 



Cones elongated, the scales numerous, shorter than their bracts. Young branch- 

 lets soon becoming glabrous. Leaves triangular. 



Larix Occident alis, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 143, 1. 120 (1849). 

 Newberry, Facific B. E. Eep, vi. pt. iii. 59, f. 24, 25. 

 Cooper, Am. Nat, iii. 412, — Lyall, Jour. Linn, Soc. vii. 

 143, — (Nelson) Senilis, Pinacece, 91. — Hoopes, Ever- 



greens, 253. — Regel, Gartenjloray xx. 103, t. 685, f . 8-10 ; 

 Act, Hort, Petrop, i. 158 ; Beige Hort, xxii. 101, t. 8, f . 

 3-5. — Gordon, Pinetum, ed. 2, 176. — Veitcb, Man. Conif, 



and Forest, ix. 491, f. 71. — Mayr, Wald. Nordam. 

 347. — Lemmon, Rep. California State Board Forestry, 

 iii. 108 {Cone-Bearers of California). — Beissner, Handb. 

 Nadelh, 314, f . 80. — Masters, Jour. B. Hort. Soc. xiv. 

 218. — Hansen, Jour. E. Hart. Soc, xiv. 417 (Pinetum 

 DanicuTn). — Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 25. — Leiberg, 

 Contrih. U. S. Nat. Herb. v. 50. 



130. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. Kith Census U. S. Pinus Nuttallii, Parlatore, De CandoUe Prodr, xvi. pt. ii. 



ix. 216 ; Gard. Chron. n. ser. xxv. 652, f. 145 ; Garden 



412 (1868). 



When it has grown under the most favorable conditions on low moist soil, at elevations of between 

 two thousand and three thousand feet above the sea-level, the western Larch often rises to the height 

 ■>? of two hundred and fifty feet, with a trunk from six to eight feet in diameter ; on drier soil and exposed 

 mountain slopes it has an average height of about one hundred feet, with a trunk two or three feet in 

 diameter. On young trees the remote elongated and nearly horizontal branches form an open pyramidal 

 head ; usually they soon disappear from the lower part of the stem, and the full-grown tree is remark- 

 able for its elongated tapering naked trunk, which is frequently free of branches for two hundred feet 

 above the ground and is surmounted by a short narrow pyramidal head of small branches clothed with 

 scanty foliage,* or occasionally at low altitudes the crown is larger, with elongated drooping branches. 

 The bark of young stems is thin, dark-colored, and scaly, but when the tree is about one hundred years 

 old the bark changes in character, and, beginning near the base, where on old trunks it is often five or 

 six inches thick, it breaks into irregularly shaped oblong plates frequently two feet in length and covered 

 with thin closely appressed light cinnamon-red scales. The leading branchlets are comparatively stout, 

 and when they first appear are covered with soft pale pubescence, which on some trees disappears 

 during the first season and on others continues to cover the shoots until their second year; they are 

 bright orange-brown in their first year and sometimes retain this color during a second season, 

 although they more often then begin to assume the dark gray-brown color of the older branches and 

 of the lateral branchlets, which, usually short, are occasionally nearly three quarters of an inch in length. 

 The winter-buds are globose and about an eighth of an inch in diameter, their dark chestnut-brown 

 scales being erose and often coated on the margins with hoary tomentum. The leaves are triangular, 

 rounded on the back, conspicuously keeled on the lower surface, rigid, sharp-pointed, from an inch to 

 an inch and three quarters in length, about one thirty-second of an inch in width, and light pale green, 

 turning pale yellow early in the autumn. The staminate flowers are oblong, with pale yellow anthers, 



^ The most remarkable fact, perhaps, about this tree is the small- 

 ness of leaf surface in comparison with height and thickness of 

 stem, and there is certainly no other instance among the trees of 

 the northern hemisphere where such massive trunks support such 

 small short branches and sparse foliage. It is not, therefore, sur- 

 prising that Larix ocddentalis grows slowly after the loss of its 

 lower branches, usually at the end of forty or fifty years. The 



specimen in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the 

 American Museum of Natural History, New York, is eighteen 

 inches in diameter inside the bark and two hundred and sixty- 

 seven years old. At the age of fifty years the trunk of this tree 

 was nine inches in diameter ; the sapwood, which is half an inch 

 thick, contains forty layers of annual growth. 



