December 22, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



501 



and now common in cultivation, which is curious rather 

 than handsome ; and Beissner describes other abnormal 

 forms which I have not, however, seen. The Siberian 

 Larch (var. Sibirica) is now generally considered a geo- 

 graphical form of the European species. It forms great 

 forests on the plains of Russia and Siberia, and grows also 

 on the Ural and Altai Mountains. This tree, so far as I 

 know, has not been sufficiently tested in the United 

 States. 



Much more picturesque than the European species is our 

 native Larix larcina. This inhabitant of northern swamps 

 grows to a large size when transplanted into dry ground, 

 and sends out long and often contorted branches. It is 

 this tree which may oft^n be seen in great beauty standing 

 near old New England farmhouses and country mansions, 

 and as an ornamental tree the eastern American Larch, 

 which has been neglected in recent years, may well be 

 used much more freely than it has been. 



In Larix occidentalis of the high interior Columbian basin 

 of the north-west Larix displays its greatest size and no- 

 bility of port, and furnishes to the world one of its great 

 trees. From 150 to 200 feet in height, with a tall massive 

 trunk from seven to ten feet in diameter and covered with 

 bright cinnamon-red bark broken into thick enormous 

 plates, the western Larch is one of the most beautiful and 

 impressive trees of the continent, and in strength of timber 

 surpasses all other American conifers. 



Long neglected by the cultivators of exotic trees because 

 David Douglas, who introduced most of the trees of the 

 north-western part of this continent into English gardens, 

 mistook it for the eastern species, Larix occidentalis was 

 first cultivated in 1880 in the Arnold Arboretum, whence it 

 has been distributed among many of the principal tree- 

 lovers of the United States and Europe. Seedling plants of 

 this Larch grow badly here and still remain small and 

 stunted, but grafted on the roots of the Japanese species it 

 has grown rapidly and vigorously, and the largest plants, 

 now about eighteen feet in height, have already produced 

 a few cones. The second species of western North America, 

 Larix Lyallii, is a small alpine tree found only at thetimber- 

 line on some of the high mountains of southern Alberta 

 and the adjacent parts of the United States. It has 

 not been introduced into cultivation, and probably would 

 grow very slowly at the sea-level. Even in its best 

 condition, this Larch has little to recommend it to the 

 lovers of ornamental trees. 



The Japanese Larch (Larix leptolepis) is common at 

 elevations of from 5,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea, scat- 

 tered always in small groves mixed with other deciduous 

 trees, and is confined to the central part of the main island. 

 It is a handsome tree, seventy or eighty feet tall, with pale 

 blue-green foliage and a massive trunk covered with reddish 

 bark, and in habit is not unlike the European species. 

 Larix leptolepis is perfectly hardy in eastern Massachu- 

 setts, and the large specimen which stood for nearly thirty 

 years in Mr. Hunnewell's pinetum produced annually 

 abundant crops of fertile seeds. Although it grows here 

 very rapidly, the Japanese Larch is certainly inferior as an 

 ornamental tree to the native species, and it probably will 

 never become popular in this country. There is an alpine 

 form of this tree (var. Murrayana of Maximowicz — Larix 

 Japonica, Murray) which grows on Fugi-san at an eleva- 

 tion of about 8,500 feet, and differs from the common 

 form only in its dwarfer habit, shorter branches and smaller 

 cones. This plant has been raised in the Arnold Arboretum 

 from seeds which I brought from Japan five years ago. It 

 is, of course, too soon to form any idea of its value here. 

 And this is true of Larix Dahurica, which is a large tree not 

 unlike the European Larch, and possibly only a geographical 

 form of that species, which is widely distributed through 

 Siberia, northern China, Manchuria, Kamtschatka and Sag- 

 halin. Young plants of this Larch are growing well in the 

 Arboretum, where they give promise of success, as do seed- 

 lings of the form of this species which reaches the extreme 

 northern part of Yezo and the Kurile Islands (var. Japonica 



of Maximowicz — Larix Kurilensis of Mayr) (see Garden and 

 Forest, vol. vi., fig. 76). 



The Himalayan Larix Griffithii has been raised several 

 times in the Arboretum, but the seedlings have soon died, 

 and I have never seen anywhere a good plant of this Larch, 

 which in its native mountain forests of Nepal, Sikkim and 

 Bootan is a slender tree sixty or seventy feet in height 

 with long thin pendulous branches and elongated cones 

 larger than those produced by any other Larch-tree, and 

 conspicuous for their long exserted bracts. 



Pseudolarix, like Ginkgo, is a monotypic Chinese genus 

 known only from trees cultivated in temple gardens. It 

 resembles Larix in its clustered deciduous leaves, but differs 

 from that genus in its stalked, elongated, pendulous male 

 flowers, borne in umbels at the ends of short spur-like 

 lateral branchlets, and in its deciduous cone-scales, which 

 separate from the central axis as soon as the cone ripens. 

 Little is really known yet of this interesting tree either in 

 Europe or America. Fortune, who first saw it dwarfed in 

 Chinese gardens, finally, in 1 S54, discovered some trees near 

 a Buddhist monastery in Che-kiang, which he estimated to 

 be from 120 to 130 feet in height with trunks five feet in 

 diameter, and sent the seeds to England. If it is cultivated 

 at all in Japan I failed to notice it there, and Rein in his 

 exhaustive work on that empire does not mention Pseudo- 

 larix, so that this tree is known outside of China only from 

 specimens less than fifty years old. The largest tree I have 

 seen is in the Rovelli Nursery at Pallanza, Italy, and is 

 now probably nearly forty feet high ; on the grounds of 

 the old Parsons Nursery in Flushing, Long Island, there is 

 a plant nearly as large, and in Mr. Hunnewell's pinetum 

 there is one that has produced fertile seeds for several years. 

 Pseudolarix Ksempferi, as the species is called, appears to 

 delight in hot dry summers, and will probably succeed in 

 our northern states better than in western Europe. I have 

 never seen a plant which appeared to suffer from heat or 

 cold, fungal diseases or the attacks of insects. The Golden 

 Larch, so named probably because the leaves turn bright 

 clear yellow in the autumn before falling, is one of the 

 most promising of the exotic trees which are on trial in this 

 country, and now that plants in Europe and America are 

 beginning to produce seeds, it will soon be possible to test 

 it here more thoroughly than it has been in the past. The 

 young trees have more the habit of Cedrus than of Larix, 

 with long branches usually pendant at the extremities, and 

 generally a broad flat-topped rather than a pyramidal head. 



Pseudotsuga, a barbarous and entirely inappropriate name, 

 half Greek and half Japanese, has been inflicted on one 

 of the most beautiful and valuable of all American conifers, 

 the great Douglas Spruce of western North America. The 

 genus is pretty closely related to Abies, from which it dif- 

 fers, however, in its petioled leaves, pendulous cones with 

 persistent scales always much shorter than their conspicu- 

 ous three-lobed bracts, and in the structure of the seeds, 

 which are destitute of resin vesicles. There are two species 

 in western North America, and in Japan, judging from the 

 figure of a cone recently published in a Japanese botanical 

 periodical, there is evidently a third about which, however, 

 nothing as yet appears to be known to the outside world. 



The Douglas Spruce, Pseudotsuga taxifolia, is one of the 

 largest and most widely distributed trees of the continent. 

 Near the shores of Puget Sound, where it grows in the great- 

 est perfection, individuals between three and four hundred 

 feet in height, with trunks ten feel in diameter, are not rare, 

 and trunks even larger can occasionally be found. Trees 

 nearly as large grow on the western slope of the California 

 Sierra, but in drier interior regions where the Douglas Spruce 

 is found on nearly all mountain ranges southward to 

 Mexico and eastward to Wyoming, the outer range of the 

 Rocky Mountains in Colorado and to the mountains of 

 western Texas, it is a smaller tree, usually not more 

 than 100 feet in height, with a trunk only lour or five 

 feet in diameter. The Douglas Spruce was introduced 

 into English gardens nearly seventy years ago by 

 David Douglas, and its value as an ornamental tree in 



