LARIX OCCIDENTALS. 401 



early age of the tree and leaving a short pyramidal head of short 

 branches clothed with a scanty foliage. Branchlets stoutish, at first 

 pubescent, with reddish brown bark changing to grey-brown with leaves 

 trigonous, keeled on the lower side, rigid, acute, 1 1-5 inch long, pale 

 green. Staminate flowers shortly stipitate, globose-cylindric with pale 

 yellow anthers. Cones ovoid-cylindric, obtuse, 1 1-5 inch long and 

 nearly an inch in diameter; scales suborbicular, entire or slightly erose; 

 bracts produced into elongated, exserted bristle-like tips as long again as 

 the scale. 



Larix occidentalis, Nuttall, Sylva, III. 143, t. 120 (1849). Hoopes, Evergreens, 

 253. Regel in Gartenfl. XX. 103, with fig. Gordon,' Pinet. ed. II. 176. Sargent 

 in Gard. Chron. ,XXV. (1886), p. 652, with fig. ; and Silva. N. Amer. XII. 11, 

 t. 594. Maconn, Cat. Canad. Plants, 475. Beissner, Nadelhokk. 314, with fig. 

 Masters in Jonrn. R. Hort. Soc. XIV. 218. 



L. americana brevifolia, Carriere, Traite Conif. cd. II. 357. 



Finns Nuttalli, Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 412. 



Eng. Western Larch. Amer. Tamarack. Germ. Westamerikanische Larche. 



Fig. 104. Fertile branchlet of Larix occidentalis. 

 (From the Gardeners' Chronicle.) 



The habitat of the Western Larch is for the most part restricted 

 to the basin of the upper Columbia river and its tributaries in 

 the States of Oregon, Washington, northern Montana and Idaho, 

 crossing into southern British Columbia to the mountains east of 

 Lake Shuswap, and finding its northern limit at about lat. 

 5 1 1ST. It nowhere forms pure forests of any extent, but is 

 scattered over the region mixed with Hemlock, Spruce and Douglas 

 Firs and other trees in the valleys and lowlands, and growing mostly 

 in the deep alluvial soil of river sides it only occasionally ascends the 

 drier mountain sides at elevations of 2,500 to 5,000 feet. It attains 

 its largest size along the streams which now into Flatheacl Lake. 



DD 



