LASIX EUROP.EA. 127 



Larix europsea.— The common Larch is well known as a tall 

 slender tree, with horizontal branches and pendulous branchlets 

 clothed with tufts of linear leaves, but which are often scattered 

 on the youngest growth. " In ths spring, when the young leaves 

 have just burst into life, the Larch has a peculiar bright yellowish 

 green tint, which is possessed by no other tree of our forests, 

 and for this reason alone it should be planted with other trees, 

 sparingly in the shrubbery, and in groups or singly in the 

 park." * 



Habitat. — The Alps and central Europe, chiefly at altitudes of 

 from 3,000 to 5,000 feet, forming dense forests, often intermixed 

 with the Spruce and Silver Firs, and sometimes with the Cembra 

 Pine. Also Siberia, from the "Ural Mountains to Kamtchatka. 



Introduced into England prior to 1629, in which year it is 

 mentioned by Parkinson in his Pamasus.\ 



Laiix davurica and L. Ledeboun take the place of the European Larch 

 in northern Asia, of which they are considered hy good authorities to 

 he varieties % — the characters in which they differ from it being 

 assigned to geographical position only. They are of no value to British 

 arboriculture, but in the dreary inhospitable regions in which they 

 abound, they add to the scanty resources of the inhabitants in various 

 ways — in supplying fuel, logs for their huts, &c, and "from the boiled 

 under-bark mixed with rye flour, and afterwards buried for a few 

 hours in the snow, the hardy Siberian hunters prepare a sort of 

 leaven with which they supply the place of common leaven, when the 

 latter is destroyed, as it frequently is, by the intense cold to which 

 hunters are exposed in pursuit of game." 



Larix europcect pendula is a weeping variety, originally brought from 

 the Tyrol. The branches, as well as the branchlets, are pendulous. 

 Other varieties have also been met with in cultivation. By far the 

 most remarkable deviation from the usual type with which we are 

 acquainted, is one growing at Henham Hall, Suffolk, the seat of the 

 Earl of Stradbroke. In this variety the branches are excessively 

 developed, apparantly at the expense of the trunk, which is only 

 11 feet high; they cover a space 100 feet long by 63 feet wide. 



The common Larch has been more extensively planted in Great 

 Britain for purposes of utility than any other timber tree. It grows 



* Dr. Lindley, in English Cyclopcedia, p. 12. 



+ Idem. 



t By Parlatore they are described a3 distinct species. De Candolle, Prod, xvi., 410. 

 Dr. Kegel reduces Larix Ledebouri to L. europcw, but makes L. dami/rica, a species.— 

 Journal of Botany, iv., p. 138. 



