LiEIX KfiMPFEEI. 129 



Named in compliment to William Griffith, a Surgeon and Naturalist 

 in the service of the East India Company, and for some time Professor 

 of Botany in the Medical College at Madras. 



Larix Ksempferi is the most ornamental of all the Larches. It 

 is a moderately vigorous growing tree of pyramidal habit. The 

 branches and branchlets are like those of the common Larch, and 

 the leaves are fasciculated in the same way as in that tree, but 

 they are longer and broader; at first they are of a light yellowish 

 green, with a soft pleasing tint, peculiarly attractive iu the spring 

 months; as the season advances they become much deeper and 

 duller in colour, and in the autumn finally change to a bright 

 golden yellow. "The cones are pendulous, about 3 inches long and 

 2g inches in diameter, with excessively deciduous scales, diverging 

 like' those of an artichoke head, to which, on a small scale, the 

 whole cones bear no little resemblance. The seeds are exactly the 

 size of the scales, two of them occupying the whole inner face with 

 their wings. The least touch suffices to break up the cones, when 

 the scales fall asunder."* 



Habitat. — Eastern and northern China. 



Introduced in 1846 by Mr. Robert Fortune. 



This beautifid tree was first made known to Europeans by Engelbert 

 Kaempfer, a native of Detmold, in Germany (a.d. 1651—1716), the first 

 European naturalist who visited Japan, which he did, in 1690, hi the 

 capacity of physician to the Dutch Embassy. He made notes of every- 

 thing he saw, which he afterwards published in a book called Amceni- 

 tates Exotieoe, in which the first mention of this tree is made.f 

 Nothing more was seen or heard of it till Mr. Fortune's visit to 

 China, where, he informs us, % he frequently met with it in a dwarf 

 form in gardens, but not in a wild state, tiU February, 1854, when 

 he found some trees near a Buddhist monastery in the western part of 

 the maritime province of Che-kiang, which lies immediately south of 

 Shanghai. These trees are remarkably fine specimens, their stems 

 being fully 5 feet in diameter at 2 feet from the ground, and the 

 estimated height from 120 to 130 feet. 



The Chinese Larch is appropriately dedicated to Kssmpfer, in re- 



* Dr. Lindley, Gardeners' Chronicle, 1854, p. 255. 



+ In these words, " Seosi vulgo Kara Maatz Nomi, Larix Conifera nucleis pyramidatis, 

 foliis deeiduis." The vagueness of this description has given rise to a doubt wnetner 

 Larix Kcempferi is the tree referred to, it being almost equally probable that the Japanese 

 species, L. leptolepis may have been the tree noticed. 



J Gardeners' Chronicle, 1855, p. 242. 

 K 



