LARIX LYALLII, Lyall’s Larch
- Larix Lyallii, Parlatore, Enum. Sem. Hort. Reg. Mus. Flor. 1863, Journ. Bot. i. 35 (1863), and Gard. Chron. 1863, p. 916; Sargent, Gard. Chron. xxv. 653, f. 146 (1886), Silva N. Amer. xii, 15, t. 595 (1898), and Trees N. Amer. 37 (1905); Kent, Veitch’s Man. Coniferæ, 399 (1900).
A tree attaining in America 80 feet in height and 12 feet in girth, but usually considerably smaller. Bark of young stems and branches thin and pale grey, on larger stems loose and scaly, on older trunks 2 inches thick and fissuring into irregular plates covered by reddish-brown loose scales. Young branchlets covered with a dense greyish tomentum, concealing the pulvini, and partly persistent on older branchlets, which become greyish black in colour. Short shoots stout and greyish pubescent. Bud-scales fringed with long cilia. Base of the long shoots girt with a sheath of the previous season’s bud-scales, the uppermost of which are loose, membranous, and reflected.
Leaves bluish green, rhombic in section, deeply keeled on both surfaces, 1 to 11⁄2 inch long, rigid, ending in a sharp cartilaginous point.
Staminate flowers ovoid, acute at the apex, 1⁄3 inch long, raised on stalks 1⁄5 inch long. Pistillate flowers ovoid, with the bracts reflected about their middle, their mucros curving outwards ; bract oblong, 1⁄5 inch long, truncate at the apex, the midrib being prolonged into a rigid mucro about 1⁄4 inch long.
Cones ovoid, acute at the apex, 11⁄2 to 2 inches long, on a short tomentose stalk : scales numerous, loosely imbricated, thin, ovate, of a beautiful pink colour before ripening, 1⁄2 inch long, fringed with matted hairs; outer surface sparingly pubescent : bracts extending up to the margin of the scale, with their mucros projecting beyond about 1⁄4 inch and at first directed upwards; when ripe the scales spread at right angles and finally, together with the bracts, become much reflexed. Seeds in slight depressions on the scale, with their wings narrowly divergent and not reaching its upper margin. Seed together with wing about 7% inch long; wing pale pink in colour, broadest near the base.
This species has been supposed to be an alpine form of L. occidentalis; but is readily distinguished from it by the structure of the leaves, the tomentum of the branchlets, the beautiful pink cones, which have fringed scales, and the pink-winged seeds. (A.H.)
This tree was discovered by Dr. D. Lyall when surgeon to the International Boundary Commission in British Columbia in 1858, and though I have raised seed- lings which I believe to be this species, it has not as yet been introduced into cultivation either in America or Europe, though it is a tree which must have been seen by thousands of travellers while crossing the Rocky Mountains in the Canadian Pacific Railway. Plate 112 shows a typical tree growing near Laggan, and is from a negative which I purchased at Victoria.
It is a strictly alpine tree, of somewhat limited range, its northern limit being
