Larix 



399 



Thuya only attained about no by 7 feet, and had been overtopped by the larch, 

 which ran from 140 to 150 feet high, and 7 to 14 in girth. The trees were 

 extremely dense upon the ground, standing often only 12 feet apart, and averaging 

 200 to the acre. The ground was covered with seedlings of Thuya, 3 to 6 feet 

 high, and more than thirty years old. The Thuya trees were being felled for 

 telegraph and telephone poles, but never had clean stems, being covered with 

 dead branches to 6 to 20 feet above the ground, and with living branches above 

 this, and when of a large size were always decayed at the heart. The larch, 

 as usual, was quite sound. 



A wood near Whitefish, on flat land in a moderately rainy district at 3000 feet 

 altitude, was composed of about nine-tenths larch and one-tenth Douglas fir, Finns 

 ponderosa, and Engelmann's spruce. The larch were 160 feet high by 6 to 9 feet in 

 girth, overtopping the other trees, and with clean stems up to 80 or 90 feet. A 

 stump, 40 inches in diameter, showed 585 annual rings, the sapwood with forty-two 

 rings being only an inch in thickness, and the bark two inches. 



The largest tree which I saw was growing on a high bank beside the Stillwater 

 Creek, some miles west of Whitefish. It measured 19 feet 4 inches in girth at 5 feet 

 from the ground, but the top was blown off. Near it were many large trees, 12 feet 

 to 15 feet in girth, but the tallest was only 151 feet in height. 



With regard to the height attained by the western larch, Sargent in his Report 

 on the Forest Frees of North America, 216 (1884), states that it ranges from 100 to 

 150 feet, but in the Silva he gives the maximum height as 250 feet. I could find no 

 confirmation of the latter figure either at the Arnold Arboretum or Washington, and 



1 am of opinion that 180 feet is rarely if ever exceeded. The tallest tree recorded 

 by any accurate observer is, I believe, the one cut down by Ayres ^ in the Whitefish 

 Valley at 3500 feet altitude, which measured 181 feet high, with a diameter of 3 feet 

 on the stump, and scaled 3500 feet board measure. He mentions' also another 

 tree growing on the middle fork of the Flathead river, which was 180 feet high by 

 4 feet in diameter. 



J. B. Leiberg states in his account of the Priest River Forest Reserve that the 

 larch in the sub-alpine zone, above 4800 feet elevation, averaged 60 to 100 feet in 

 height, I to 2 feet in diameter, and eighty to a hundred years old ; while in the 

 white pine zone, from 2400 to 4800 feet, the trees were 150 to 200 feet in height, 



2 to 4 feet in diameter, and 175 to 420 years old. Here the heights are evidently 

 estimates, and cannot be relied on implicitly. 



The western larch is rarely seen as pure forest, and then only as the result of 

 forest fires. Mr. Langille in his account of the Cascade Forest Reserve, p. 36, says 

 that the larch "has done more than any other species to restock the immense burns 

 that have occurred on a part of the reserve. This is largely due to the fact that the 

 thick bark of this tree resists fire better than any other species, and more trees 

 are left to cast their seed on the clean loose soil and ashes immediately after a fire. 

 The seeds are small and light, and are carried to remote places by the wind and 

 covered deeply by the fall rains. In the spring a dense mass of seedlings covers the 



• U.S. Geo!. Surz'cy, Flathead Forest Resey-'c, 256, 3 14 (1900). 



