LARIX OCCIDENTALIS, Western Larch
- Larix occidentalis, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 143, t. 120 (1849); Lyall, Journ. Linn. Soc. vii. 143 (1864); Sargent, Gard. Chron. xxv. 652, f. 145 (1886), Silva N. Amer. xii. 11, t. 594 (1898), and Trees N. Amer. 36 (1905); Kent, Veitch’s Man. Coniferæ, 400 (1900); Mayr, Fremdländ. Wald- u. Parkbäume, 306 (1906).
- Pinus Nuttalli, Parlatore, DC. Prod. xvi. 2, p. 412 (1868).
A tree attaining in America 200 feet in height and over 20 feet in girth ; narrowly pyramidal in habit, the branches being much shorter than in the other species. Bark of young stems thin, dark-coloured, and scaly ; becoming near the base of old trunks 6 inches thick and breaking into irregularly shaped oblong plates, often 2 feet in length and covered with thin reddish scales. Young branchlets covered with a minute dense pubescence intermixed with longer hairs in the grooves between the pulvini. In certain cultivated specimens the branchlets are glabrous from the first. Branchlets of the second year light brown, shining. Base of the shoot girt with a sheath of the previous season’s bud-scales, no ring of pubescence being visible. Short shoots chestnut brown, shining. Terminal buds globose, with pubescent and ciliate scales, the lowermost of which are subulately pointed. Lateral buds hemispherical with pubescent and ciliate scales. Apical buds of the short shoots broadly conical, reddish brown, pubescent.
Leaves light green in colour, up to 13⁄4 inch long, rounded on the back, deeply keeled beneath, with stomatic lines as in L. europea.
Staminate flowers raised on short stalks at maturity. Pistillate flowers ovoid ; the bracts pointing upwards and outwards and not recurved, 1⁄4 inch long, brownish in colour with a green midrib and mucro, oblong, emarginate at the apex; mucro 1⁄10 inch long.
Cones ovoid, 11⁄4 to 2 inches long, with the bracts long-exserted and the scales opening early in the season to let out the seeds and then standing at right angles to the axis of the cone. Scales in six spiral rows, each row of nine to ten scales; orbicular, 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 inch long; upper margin entire or emarginate, thin, slightly recurved, not bevelled; outer surface densely pubescent. Bracts ovate- lanceolate, extending up to near the margin of the scale, beyond which the mucro projects 1⁄8 to 1⁄2 inch. Seeds lying in two deep depressions on the scale, their wings narrowly divergent and extending up to its upper margin; body of the seed 1⁄6 inch long ; wing pale coloured, short and broad, widest at the base; seed with wing 1⁄4 to 2⁄5 inch long.
Varieties
In the wild state the tree shows little variation, except in the pubescence of the branchlets, which in rare cases is entirely absent; while in other cases, noticed occasionally at high elevations, the amount of pubescence becomes so dense as to be almost similar in character to the tomentum of Larix Lyallii. In the few cultivated
