400 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



ground and grows rapidly. The thickets become so dense that it is impossible to 

 travel through them. In time only the fittest survive, and there remains a thrifty, 

 vigorous stand of this valuable timber." In Montana the lodge-pole pine usually 

 takes possession of burnt areas ; but I saw near Belton on the Great Northern Rail- 

 way a hillside which had been swept by a fire, leaving a good number of larch trees 

 unharmed, all the trees of other species being destroyed, and larch seedlings were 

 coming up in profusion. On the Stillwater Creek farther west I noticed a burnt area 

 on which the lodge-pole pines were about 30 feet high ; and amongst them larch 

 seedlings were growing in openings exposed to sunlight during at least a part of the 

 day. Here in time the lodge-pole pine will be supplanted by the larch. Sargent's 

 statement,^ that young seedlings of the western larch are able to grow up under the 

 shade of other trees, which they finally overtop and subdue, requires modification. 

 Seedlings never occur in the shade of the forest, and are most numerous in open 

 places exposed to full sunlight ; but on good soil, as on a recently burnt area, they 

 will spring up in the partial shade of small pine trees. The western larch is not a 

 fast grower in the young stage ; at Belton seedlings twelve years old, growing on 

 rather poor rocky ground, were from 7 to 1 2 feet high. 



As the seed of the western larch had never been collected, so far as we knew, 

 by any one except Mr. Carl Purdy's collector in 1903, I visited Montana in 1906, 

 with the object of collecting a large quantity for Sir John Stirling Maxwell and 

 Lord Kesteven. In the common larch the seeds do not fall out of the cones 

 until spring, and their collection during winter is an easy matter. The western larch 

 behaves very differently, as will be seen by the following notes of my observations 

 in Montana. About the middle of August the squirrels begin to throw down cones, 

 a sign that the seeds are nearly ripe. About the loth September the leaves, which 

 form a tuft at the base of the cone, begin to turn yellow, and in a day or two become 

 brown and withered, showing that the supply of nutrition to the cone is stopped. 

 The cones, which until now were purplish in colour, become brown, and the scales 

 gape open widely, allowing the seeds to escape. By the 20th September all the cones 

 on the trees have become quite brown, and have emptied all their seeds. The empty 

 cones remain on the branches till the autumn of the following year, by which time 

 their peduncles have rotted and the cones are ready to fall. For collecting seed the 

 larch forests must be visited during the first three weeks of September ; and localities 

 where felling is being carried on should be chosen, as the cones occur only at the 

 summit of very tall trees, which are troublesome to cut down, even if permission to 

 do so has been obtained from their owners. The western larch appears to produce a 

 good crop of seed once every two or three years, and this is general over the whole 

 region. 1906 was a remarkably poor year, scarcely any cones having been formed. 

 In 1905, judging from the old cones of that year still remaining on the trees, the crop 

 of seed was very abundant. /^ u \ 



As I had long been trying to find a larch that would in England be less liable 

 to the attacks of Peziza Willkomviii than the common larch, I made inquiries as 



1 Garden and Forest, ix. 49' (.S96), where there is an article on the tree, with an illustration of the trunk, fi^ 71 

 showing the very thick bark, > a / > 



