was described as follows:—"The bark quite cinereous, not of a yellowish-brown colour, and not distinctly scarred as in the common larch, but, on the contrary, the vestiges of the scars are scarcely visible; the leaves come out so soon that they are liable to be injured by spring frosts, and what is remarkable, the female flowers are not produced till some time after those of the European larch appear; they are like those of Pinus (Larix) microcarpa. Mr. Sabine has a plant of this sort in his garden at North Mimms, which he received under the name of Larix sibirica from Messrs. Loddiges, who obtained the seed originally from Professor Pallas, whose Pinus Larix it probably is. He contrasts the cinereous bark of his plant with the pale brown colour of the common larch; it may probably prove to be a distinct species.” So far as I can learn no trees of this introduction are now living at Dunkeld.
Large quantities of seed were procured by Messrs. Little and Ballantyne of Carlisle, and raised in their nurseries about eight years ago, but the trees from them have generally been a complete failure owing to the very early bursting of their leaf-buds.
I received in 1902, from the Tula Government, through Professor Fischer de Waldheim, some seed of the Siberian larch, and a few of the seedlings look rather more promising than those from North Russia; but we are not aware that any fair- sized tree of this species now exists in England.
In December 1902 I received seed of this tree from Herr E. Rodd, which was gathered in the Ouimon valley in the Altai mountains early in September, but he tells me that it is not naturally shed there until spring. This seed germinated, but the plants raised from it are small and unhealthy, and vegetate very early in the spring, so that they seem likely to grow as badly in this climate as the larch from the Ural.
In England, as a forest tree this species seems likely to be worthless, for it opens its leaves so early, and suffers so much from spring frost, that with few exceptions the young trees I have grown are unhealthy, and many have already died, though planted in a very cold and exposed situation.
In the north of Norway I saw it growing at the Government nurseries in Saltdalen in 1903 from Russian seed sown in 1882. Trees only 15 feet high were already bearing cones, but were much healthier and more vigorous than the common larch; and in the Botanic Garden at Christiania I noticed that though growing at the rate of a foot annually, the leaves were attacked by a Chermes like C. laricis.
Timber
The tree is common in the north of Russia, where it forms a large part of the forests on the east side of the White Sea; and in the valley of the Petchora, seems to attain very large dimensions. Seebohm? says that Alexievka at the mouth of this river is the shipping port of the Petchora Timber Company, where ships are loaded with larch for Cronstadt. "The larch is felled in the forests 500 or 600 miles up the
1 Siberia in Europe, 174 (1886).
