390 LARIX D AH URIC A. 



with the soil ; it is used in ship-building, fence-posts, telegraph poles, 

 railway ties, etc.* 



According to Aiton, the American Larch was introduced into Great 

 Britain hy Peter Collinson some time prior to 1739. In this country it 

 is an inattractive tree assuming no particular shape ; its branches are 

 often irregularly developed and grow in different directions, some ascending 

 at an acute angle to the trunk, others horizontal, and others again quite 

 pendulous. f It is worthless for forestry purposes on the drier land, but 

 it would seem to be a suitable subject for trial on unproductive bogs and 

 marsh ground. It is far better adapted to the German than the British 

 climate, and it is accordingly more used for park and landscape planting 

 in Germany than in England. 



Larix dahurica. 



A medium-sized tree, at its northern limit and highest vertical range a 

 stunted, straggling shrub ; in its arborescent form with a straight slender 

 trunk and tapering loosely-branched crown, often with several leaders 

 and sparsely and irregularly branched, but in the Botanic gardens of 

 northern Europe sometimes 60 feet high with a regular pyramidal crown. 

 Branches and branchlets slender and more or less pendulous. Leaves 

 in fascicles somewhat distantly placed, narrowly linear, about an inch 

 long, pale green. Staminate flowers small, hemispheric, compressed, about 

 one-sixth of an inch in diameter ; -anthers sub-sessile, papilla- or teat-like, 

 pale green. Ovuliferous flowers cylindric, obtuse, a little less than 

 0'5 inch long, surrounded at the base by numerous crumpled, involucral 

 bracts, and composed of broadly ovate-oblong scales that are at first 

 rose-pink but change with age to dark purple, and after fertilisation to 

 dull brown. Cones ovoid or sub-globose, 0*75 1 inch. long, composed 

 of four six series of rounded or slightly truncate scales faintly striated 

 on the back. | 



Larix dahurica, Turczaninow in Bull, Soc. Nat. Mosc. 1838, p. 101. Carriere, 

 Traite Conif. ed. II. 351. Regel in Gartenfl. XX. 104. Gordon, Pinet. ed. II. 168. 

 Willkomm, Forstl. Fl. ed. II. 155. Beissner, Nadelholzk. 328, with fig. Masters 

 in Journ. E. Hort. Soc. XIV. 216. 



L. kurilensis, Mayr, Abiet. Jap. Reiches, 66, t. 5, fig. 15 (1890). 



L. europsea dahurica, London, Arb. et Frut. Brit. IV. 2352. 



Pinus dahurica, Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 121. Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 410. 



Larix dahurica is a sub-arctic species which has its home in the 

 coldest region of the northern hemisphere in which arborescent 

 vegetation is known to exist. It is spread over north-east Siberia 

 as far as the Tundras, and it is even scattered over parts of these 

 in the form of a stunted bush but a few inches high ; it attains 

 its polar limit on the Boganida river at about latitude 72 N. ; it 

 forms forests of considerable extent around lakoutsk, in Kamtschatka 

 and in Saghalien where it is often mixed with Picca ajanensis, and 



* Silva of North America, XII. 9. 



t The best specimen known to the author is standing in the grounds of Dalkeith Palace, 

 from which materials for description were communicated by the late Malcolm Dunn. 

 + Abridged from Willkomm. 



