THE LARCH. 
ISI 
ordinaril}’ attaining a length between 8o and loo feet, but under 
very favourable conditions 120 feet, with a girth of bole from 
6 to 12 feet. The brown bark is easily separable into thin 
layers, and the growth of the tree causes it to split into deep 
longitudinal fissures. The long lower branches are spreading, 
with a downward tendency, and the tips turned upward again. 
The twigs are mostly pendulous, and bear long and slender 
light-green leaves, in bundles of thirty or forty. All the other 
families of Coniferous trees are evergreen, their leaves lasting for 
several years ; but at the beginning of winter the Larch leaves 
wither and fall, and the Larch-wood takes on a more lifeless 
aspect than is assumed by any of our native trees in their leafless 
condition. But in spring, when the fresh green leaves are just 
showing in spreading tufts, and the reddish-purple female flowers 
— Tennyson’s “rosy plumelets ” — hang brightly from the gaunt 
branches, the Larch wears an entirely different appearance, and 
in summer the light grace of branches and foliage makes the 
Larch a beautiful object. That is, one should say, the trees 
that grow on the very outer edge of the wood, or, better still, one 
that has been planted as a specimen tree, where it has room to 
fling out its arms on all sides without touching anything, and 
can get the abundant light it needs. The straight rows in the 
plantation, with every tree at an equal distance from its neigh- 
bours, and its lower branches dead, may be very pretty from the 
timber-merchant’s point of view, but one likes to think of the tree 
as a living thing of beauty rather than as a detail in a factory 
where scaffold-poles and telegraph-posts are being grown to 
regulation size and shape. 
The brown cones are egg-shaped, little more than an inch in 
length, the scales with loose edges. The wood is very durable, 
and it has the great recommendation of being fit for ordinary 
use when the tree is only forty years old. It is most valuable 
for those purposes where exposure to all weathers is a necessity, 
for it endures constant change from wet to dry. Larch-bark is 
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