(occasionally five) lines. In cultivated specimens, the leaves are fringed on each side with a very thin and narrow membranous translucent border.
Staminate flowers, 3⁄8 inch long, cylindrical, raised on short stout stalks, about 1⁄16 inch long. Pistillate flowers ovoid; bracts reflected at their bases, with the mucros pointing downwards, oblong, truncate or slightly concave at the apex, the green midrib being prolonged into a mucro about 1⁄6 inch long.
Cones 3 to 4 inches long, cylindrical, tapering to a narrow, flattened apex, supported on a short stalk, glaucous green or purplish, with orange-brown bracts before ripening, composed of five spiral rows of scales, eighteen to twenty scales in each row, which, on the opening of the cone, stand almost at right angles to its axis, the bracts being exserted with their mucros directed upwards. Scales quadrangular, with a cuneate base, about 1⁄2 inch in width and length; upper margin truncate and slightly emarginate ; outer surface radially furrowed, densely pubescent towards the base. Bract lanceolate, nearly as long or quite as long as the scale, the mucro, often incurved, projecting beyond the scale about 3⁄16 inch. Seeds lying in slight depres- sions on the scale, their wings widely divergent and not extending to its upper margin. Seed, white on the inner side, shining dark brown on the outer side, about ¢ inch long; seed with wing about 7⁄16 inch long; wing brownish, rather opaque, broadest about the middle. Cotyledons? five to six, which, in the seedling, are linear, pointed, and much longer than the succeeding leaves. (A.H.)
The Sikkim larch is confined, so far as we know at present, to a rather narrow area in the Himalaya, from eastern Nepal to Bhutan, but very possibly will be found farther east. It was discovered by Griffith, but not distinguished until Sir Joseph Hooker found it in E, Nepal in December 1848.? Here it was only a small tree 20 to 40 feet high, differing from the European larch, in having very long, pensile, whip-like branches. It is called “Saar” by the Lepchas, and “Boargasella” by the Nepalese, who said that it was only found as far west as the sources of the Cosi river. In Sikkim it is common in the interior valleys of the Lachen, Lachoong, and their tributaries from about 8000 to 12,000 feet elevation, and here attains a larger size, but is not found in the forests of British Sikkim. In Illustrations of Himalayan Plants from Drawings by Cathcart, where it is beautifully figured, Sir Joseph states that it grows to a height of 60 feet in deep valleys, but prefers the dry rocky ancient moraines formed by glaciers, and also grows on grassy slopes where the drainage is good. On my journey to Tibet in 1870 I saw this tree in the Lachoong valley, but nowhere forming a forest, and usually scattered singly in rather open places, where it seemed to me to have a much less erect and regular growth, with branches more drooping in habit than any other larch. Sir Joseph Hooker says that the wood is soft and white, but a specimen from the Chumbi valley, authenticated by cones, is described by Gamble as having red heart-wood with a slow growth, twenty- one rings to the inch, and a weight of 32 lbs. to the foot.
Though introduced by Sir Joseph Hooker, who sent seeds to Kew in 1848, this tree has, except in a few places in the south-west of England, failed to grow in Europe. He says that the seedlings raised from his seeds were 3 to 4 feet high in
1 Masters, loc. cit.
- Himalayan Journals, i. 255.
