PINACE.E 31 



Now planted in the parks of San Diego, California, and in New Zealand, growing rapidly 

 in cultivation, and promising to attain a much larger size than on its native cliffs. 



2. LARK Adans. Larch. 



Tall pyramidal trees, with thick sometimes furrowed scaly bark, heavy heartwood, 

 thin pale sapwood, slender remote horizontal often pendulous branches, elongated leading 

 branchlets, short thick spur-like lateral branchlets, and small subglobose buds, their in- 

 ner scales accrescent and marking the lateral branchlets with prominent ring-like scars. 

 Leaves awl-shapad, triangular and rounded above, or rarely 4-angled, spirally disposed 

 and remote on leading shoots, on lateral branchlets in crowded fascicles, each leaf in the 

 axil of a deciduous bud-scale, deciduous. Flowers solitary, terminal, the staminate glo- 

 bose, oval or oblong, sessile or stalked, on leafless branches, yellow, composed of numerous 

 spirally arranged anthers with connectives produced above them into short points, the 

 pistillate appearing with the leaves, short-oblong to oblong, composed of few or many 

 green nearly orbicular stalked scales in the axes of much longer mucronate usually scarlet 

 bracts. Fruit a woody ovoid-oblong conic or subglobose short-stalked cone composed of 

 slightly thickened suborbicular or oblong-obovate concave scales, shorter or longer than 

 their bracts, gradually decreasing from the centre to the ends of the cone, the small scales 

 usually sterile. Seeds nearly triangular, rounded on the sides, shorter than their w r ings; 

 the outer seed-coat crustaceous, light brown, the inner membranaceous, pale chestnut- 

 brown and lustrous; cotyledons usually 6, much shorter than the inferior radicle. 



Larix is widely distributed over the northern and mountainous region of the northern 

 hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to the mountains of West Virginia and Oregon in the 

 New World, and to central Europe, the Himalayas, Siberia, Korea western China, and 

 Japan in the Old World. Ten species are recognized. Of the exotic species the European 

 Larix decidua, Mill., has been much planted for timber and ornament in the northeastern 

 states, where the Japanese Larix Kcempferi, Sarg., also flourishes. 



Larix is the classical name of the Larch-tree. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES. 



Cones small, subglobose; their scales few, longer than the bracts, leaves triangular. 



l! L. laricina (A, B, F). 

 Cones elongated; their scales numerous, shorter than the bracts. 



Young branchlets pubescent, soon becoming glabrous; leaves triangular. 



2. L. occidentalis (B, G). 

 Young branchlets tomentose; leaves 4-angled. 3. L. Lyallii (B, F). 



1. Larix laricina K. Koch. Tamarack. Larch. 



Larix americana Michx. 



Leaves linear, triangular, rounded above, prominently keeled on the lower surface, f '-1 \' 

 long, bright green, conspicuously stomatiferous when they first appear; turning yellow and 

 falling in September or October. Flowers: male subglobose and sessile; female oblong, 

 with light-colored bracts produced into elongated green tips, and nearly orbicular rose-red 

 scales. Fruit on stout incurved stems, subglobose, rather obtuse, \'-\' long, composed of 

 about 20 scales slightly erose on their nearly entire margins, rather longer than broad and 

 twice as long as their bracts, bright chestnut-brown at maturity; usually falling during 

 their second year; seeds f long, about one third as long as their light chestnut-brown wings 

 broadest near the middle and obliquely rounded at apex. 



A tree, 50-60 high, with a trunk 18'-20' in diameter, small horizontal branches forming 

 during the early life of the tree a narrow regular pyramidal head always characteristic of 

 this tree when crowded in the forest, or with abundant space sweeping out in graceful 



