coNiFERiE, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 15 



LARIX LYALLII. 



Tamarack. 



Cones elongated, their scales shorter than the hracts. Branchlets tomentose 

 Leaves tetragonal. 



Xjarix Lyallii, Parlatore, Enum. Sem. Hort. Beg. Mus, Census ?7. S. ix. 216 ; Gard. Chron* n. ser. xxv. 653, 



Flor. 1863 ; Jour. Bot. i. 35 ; Gard. Chron. 1863, 916 ; f . 146 ; ser. 3, xxiii. 356, f . 136. — Mayr, Wald, Nordam. 



Gartenflora, xiii. 244. — Lyall, Jour. Linn. Soc. vii. 355. — Lemmon, Bep. California State Board Forestry, 



143. — Henkel & Hochstetter, Syn. Nadelh. 417. — Car- iii. 109 {Cone-Bearers of California). — Beissner, ^<z?m^6. 



, r 



rifere, TraitS Conif ed. 2, 361. — Hoopes, Evergreens, Nadelh. 316, f . 81. — Masters, Jour. B. Hort. Soc. slv. 



256.— Kegel, Gartenflora, xx. 103, t. 685, f. 11-13; 218. 



Act. Hort. Petrop. i. 158; Beige Hort. xxii. 102, t. 9, f. Pinus Lyallii, Parlatore, Be Candolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 



1-3. — .Bertrand, Ann. Sci. Nat. sdr. 5, xx. 90. — Veitch, 412 (1868). 



Man. Conif. 130. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th 



A tree, usually from forty to fifty and occasionally seventy-five feet in height, with a trunk 

 generally eighteen or twenty inches but sometimes three or four feet in diameter, and remote elongated 



r 



palmately divided exceedingly tough persistent branches which, developing very irregularly, are 

 sometimes decidedly pendulous and sometimes abruptly ascending at the extremities, one or two being 

 frequently much longer and stouter than the others, and sometimes twenty feet in length. Until the 

 tree is about fifteen feet high the bark of the slender stem and branches is thin, rather lustrous, smooth 

 and pale gray tinged with yellow ; it is dark brown and broken into loose thin scales on larger stems 

 and on the large branches of old trees, and on f uUy grown trunks it becomes from one half to three 

 quarters of an inch in thickness, and is slightly divided by shallow fissures into irregularly shaped 

 plates which are covered with thin dark red-brown loosely attached scales. The winter-buds are 

 prominent, and conspicuous from the long white matted hairs which fringe the margins of their scales, 

 and, protruding from between them, often almost entirely cover the bud. The leading branchlets are 

 stout and coated with thick hoary tomentum, which does not entirely disappear until after their second 

 winter ; they then begin gradually to grow darker, and sometimes become nearly black at the end of 

 four or five years, when their stout lateral spur-like branchlets have occasionally attained the length of 

 three quarters of an inch. The leaves are tetragonal, rigid, short-pointed, pale blue-green and from an 

 inch to an inch and a half in length. The staminate flowers are oblong and about an eighth of an inch 

 long, with pale yellow anthers, and are raised on short stout stalks. The pistillate flowers are ovate- 

 oblong, with dark red or occasionally pale yellow-green scales and dark purple bracts which are abruptly 

 contracted into elongated slender tips. The cones are ovate, rather acute, and from an inch and a 

 half to nearly two inches in length, and are subsessile or raised on slender peduncles coated with hoary 

 tomentum ; their bracts are dark purple, exserted and very conspicuous, with slender tips much longer 

 than the oblong-obovate thin dark reddish purple or rarely green scales ; these are erose and their 

 margins are fringed with matted white hairs, which are also scattered over their lower surface, being 

 thickest near the middle ; at maturity the scales spread nearly at right angles from the stout axis of the 

 cone, which is densely covered with pale tomentum, and frequently become much reflexed before the 

 falling of the cone, which usuaUy occurs during the first autumn. The seeds are full and rounded on 

 the sides, an eighth of an inch in length and about half as long as their light red lustrous wings which 

 are broadest near the base, with nearly parallel sides. 



Larix Lyallii^ which grows only near the timber-line on mountain slopes between four thousand 



