Larches

FAMILY CONIFERAE

Genus LARIX Adans.

Tall pyramidal trees, with few horizontal branches. Leaves linear, deciduous ; fascicled except on new shoots. Flowers solitary, monoecious, naked. Fruit annual, woody cones, solitary, erect and sessile on the twig. Wood hard, heavy, resinous.

Beside the three North American species there are six OldWorld larches-all in the colder latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, except a single Himalayan species. The native species are inferior to exotics in cultivation. The handsomest larch for lawns is L. leptolepis, Murr. -(L. Kaempferi, Sarg.), a Japanese species with pale blue-green, white-lined leaves. The common larch of Europe, L. decidua, Mill., is most frequently met with in cultivation here.

It is a graceful, pyramidal tree, slender and supple limbed,with a fresh cover of feathery leaves every spring. In autumn the foliage turns yellow before it is shed. The Himalayan L. Griffithi is not hardy in the North. It is cultivated in its handsome pendulous forms.

Alpine Larch Tree
American Larch Tree
Cedar of Lebanon Tree
Tamarack Larch Tree
Western Larch Tree