LAR1COPSIS K^MPFERI. 



405 



broadest, with deciduous scales diverging at the apex much like those 

 the common artichoke. Scales ovate-oblong, sub-acute, about 1-25 inch 

 long, with a small bract of nearly the same shape on the under side, 

 not more than one-fourth as long as the scale and bearing two seeds' 

 near the base on the ventral side. Seed wings tapering to a rounded 

 point, nearly as long as the scale. 

 Laricopsis Kaempferi, supra. 



Pseudolarix Kaempferi, Gordon, Pinet. ed. I. loc. cit. ; and ed. II. 360. Carriere, 

 Traite Comf. ed. II. 353. Masters in Gard. Chron XXI. (1884), p. 584 with 

 hgs ; Journ. Linn. Soc. XXII. 208, with fig. ; and Journ. R. Hort. Soc.' XIV. 

 244. Beissner. Nadelholzk. 310, with fig. 



Larix Kaempferi, Carriere in Flore des Serres, XI. 97 (1856). Kent in Veitch's 

 Manual, ed. I. 129. 



Abies Kaempferi. Lindley in Gard. Chron. (1854), p. 255, with fig Murray 

 Pines and Firs of Japan, 100, with figs. 



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



Eng Golden Larch, Chinese Larch. Fr. Meleze de Chine. Germ. Chinesische- 

 Goldlarche. 



Nothing is known respect- 

 ing the geographical distribu- 

 tion of Laricopsis Kcempferi. 

 Fortune, its discoverer, first 

 became acquainted with it as 

 a pot plant in a dwarfed state, 

 but he did not meet with 

 adult trees till the autumn of 

 1853, when he came upon 

 some fine specimens growing 

 near a monastery at Tsant-sing 

 in the province of Che-kiang 

 ' at 1,000 to 1,500 feet above 

 sea-level, and subsequently he 

 saw others on a sloping hill at 

 Quanting, twenty miles distant, 

 localities not found on modern 

 maps. As the trees in both 

 places appeared to him to have 

 been planted, the origin of the 

 species remains in uncertainty. 

 The Chinese Larch was for a long time very rare in British gardens. 

 Only about a dozen plants were raised from the seeds collected by 

 Fortune, and propagation by layering from such of these as were 

 available for the purpose was the only means of increasing the number 

 till the recent coning of the tree at Pallanza, whence seeds and seedlings 

 have since been distributed. It has proved hardy wherever it has 

 been planted, and is a beautiful and interesting tree, especially in 

 autumn when the leaves before falling take on a golden yellow of 

 exceptional richness. It has also proved hardy in the New England 

 States of North America where the winters are much colder and the 

 summers hotter and drier than ours, a circumstance which seems to 



Fig. 106. Cone of Laricopsis Kcempferi. 



