LARIX GRIFFITHII. 395 



continent of Europe, besides the ordinary uses of its timber, Venetian 

 turpentine is procured from trees growing on the southern slopes of 

 the Alps : and in places where the Oak is scarce, Larch bark is used 

 in tanning leather. As a tree for the park and landscape, the common 

 Larch has always held a prominent place as a graceful tree, distinct in 

 all its most obvious characters from every other deciduous tree, 

 particularly in Spring when the young leaves have just burst into life, 

 and which at that season have a peculiar soft yellowish green tint 

 possessed -by no other tree of our forests. It is also highly appreciated 

 in the eastern States of North America, both as a timber and 

 ornamental tree. 



Larix Griffith!!. 



A slender tree 40 60 feet high in the valleys of the inner Himalaya, 

 much smaller on the higher slopes. Bark of trunk pale reddish brown, 

 rugged and much fissured into irregular plates. Branches spreading or 

 ascending, often long in proportion to height of trunk. Branchlets quite 

 pendulous, covered with pale brown bark, fluted and grooved by cortical 

 outgrowths obliquely decurrent from the "spurs." Buds broadly conic 

 with light chestnut-brown perulse. Leaves in fascicles of thirty- fifty, 

 linear-acicular, about an inch long, light soft green. Staminate flowers 

 globose, 0'25 inch in diameter ; anthers numerous with a sub-quadrate, 

 pale brown connective. Ovuliferous flowers cylindric, composed of 

 numerous small suborbicular scales subtended by lanceolate, acuminate 

 bracts three times as long as themselves, bright crimson with a green 

 median line. Cones shortly stalked, cylindric, 23 inches long; scales 

 subquadrate-cimeate with retuse apical margin; bracts exserted, lanceolate, 

 cuspidate, reflexed at the tip. Seeds with an oblong wing. 



Larix Griffithii, Hooker til, Illust, Him. Plants, t. 21 (exclu. figs. A. 14), 1855 ; 

 Fl. Brit. Ind. V. 655 ; and Gard. Chron. XXV. (1886), p. 718, with fig. Carriere, 

 Traite Couif. ed. II. 359 (Griffithiana). Brandis, Forest Fl. N.W. India, 531. 

 Gordon. Pinet. ed. II. 171. Masters in Gard. Chron. XXVI. (1886), p. 464, 

 with fig. ; and Journ. R Hort. Soc. XIV. 217. Beissner, Nadelholzk. 316. 



Pinus Griffithii, Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 411 (1868). 



Eng. Himalayan Larch. Fr. Meleze de 1' Himalaya. Germ. Griffiths-Larche. 

 Ital. Larice del Sikkim. 



Larix Griffithii has a restricted range in eastern Nepal, Sikkim and 

 western Bhotan at 8,000 12,000 feet elevation. The wood is of 

 no great economic value ; it is white, soft but durable and splits 

 well ; the planks are, however, of small scantling. 



The Himalayan Larch is chiefly distinguished from the other species 

 by its larger cones with exserted reflexed bracts ; in aspect it closely 

 resembles the pendulous variety of the European species. As seen on the 

 slopes of the inner Himalaya, it is a graceful tree of slender habit 

 and sparse foliage ; its long pensile branchlets are set in motion by 

 the slightest breeze, and in a heavy gale are so completely blown on 

 one side that the tree appears lop-sided. It was discovered in 

 western Bhotan in 1837 by William Griffith whose enormous collection 

 of herbarium specimens lay buried for many years in the cellars of 



