[Abies Larix.[J] Nat. Ord.—ConiferÆ; Linn.—Monoec. Monand.]

The Larch claims the Alps and Apennines for its native country, where it thrives in higher regions of the air than any known tree of its large bulk, hanging over rocks and precipices which have never been trod by human feet. It is often felled by the Alpine peasant, to fall athwart some yawning chasm, where it affords an awful passage from cliff to cliff, while the roaring cataract below, is only seen in surges of vapour.

The Larch is first mentioned as growing in England in 1629, but it did not become plentiful in nurseries until 1759. It is stated, in the Transactions of the Highland Society (vol. xi. p. 169), that it was first planted as a forest-tree at Goodwood, the seat of the Duke of Richmond, near Chichester; but it was not until after 1784, on the Society of Arts offering gold medals and premiums for its cultivation, that it became generally planted. The following are some of the largest numbers of trees planted about that time by the respective parties:—The Bishop of Llandaff, 48,500, on the high grounds near Ambleside, in Westmoreland; W. Mellish, Esq. of Blythe, 47,500; George Wright, Esq. of Gildingwells, 11,573; and the late Earl of Fife, 181,813, in the county of Moray, in Scotland. The same spirit for planting this tree has continued to the present time, wherever the land has not been thought more valuable for other purposes. In 1820 the Society for promoting Arts, &c., presented his Grace the Duke of Devonshire with the gold medal, for planting 1,981,065 forest-trees, 980,128 of which were Larch.

Of the introduction of the Larch into Scotland, it is stated by Headrick, in his Survey of Forfarshire: "It is generally supposed that Larches were brought into Scotland by one of the Dukes of Athol; but I saw three Larches of extraordinary size and age, in the garden near the mansion-house of Lockhart of Lee, on the northern banks of the Clyde, a few miles below Lanark. The stems and branches were so much covered with lichens, that they hardly exhibited any signs of life or vegetation. The account I heard of them was, that they were brought there by the celebrated Lockhart of Lee (who had been ambassador from Cromwell to France), soon after the restoration of Charles II. (about 1660). After Cromwell's death, thinking himself unsafe on account of having served the usurper, he retired for some time into the territories of Venice; he there observed the great use the Venetians made of Larches in ship-building, in piles for buildings, in the construction of their houses, and for other purposes; and when he returned home, he brought a great number of large plants, in pots, in order to try if they could be gradually made to endure the climate of Scotland. He nursed his plants in hot-houses, and in a greenhouse, sheltered from the cold, until they all died except the three alluded to. These, in desperation, he planted in the warmest and best sheltered part of his garden, where they attained an extraordinary height and growth."

The Common Larch, A. Larix, may be described as "a tree, rising in favourable situations on the Alps, and also in Britain, from eighty to one hundred feet in height, with a trunk from three to four feet in diameter, and having a conical head. Branches subverticillate, and spreading horizontally from the straight trunk; occasionally, however, rather pendulous, particularly when old. Branchlets more or less pendulous. Leaves linear, soft, blunt, or rounded at the points, of an agreeable light green colour; single or fasciculated; in the latter case many together round a central bud; spreading, and slightly recurved. Male catkins without foot-stalks, globular, or slightly oblong, of a light yellow colour; and, together with the female catkins, or young cones, appearing in April and the beginning of May; the latter varying from a whitish to a bright red colour. Cones of an oblong, ovate shape, erect, full one inch in length, and of a brownish colour when ripe. Scales persistent, roundish, striated, and generally slightly waved, but not distinctly notched on the margin. Bracts generally longer than the scales, particularly towards the base of the cones. Seeds of an irregular or ovate form, fully one-eighth of an inch long, and more than half-surrounded by the smooth, shining, persistent pericarp. Cotyledons five to seven."—Lawson's Manual.

In the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Agriculture at Paris, for the year 1787, there is an Essay by M. le President de la Tour d'Aigues, on the culture of the Larch, in which it is celebrated as one of the most useful of all timber trees. He tells us that in his own garden he has rails which were put up in the year 1743, partly of oak and partly of Larch. The former, he says, have yielded to time, but the latter are still sound. And in his Castle of Tour d'Aigues he has Larchen beams of twenty inches square, which are sound, though above two hundred years old. The finest trees he knows of this kind, grew in some parts of Dauphiny, and in the forest of Baye, in Provence, where there are Larches, he tells us, which two men cannot encompass.

The timber is valuable for many purposes. It is said, that old dry Larch will take such a polish as to become almost transparent, and that, in this state, it may be wrought into very beautiful wainscot. In our encomium of the Larch we must not omit that the old painters used it, more than any other wood, to paint on, before the use of canvas became general. Many of Raphael's pictures are painted on boards of Larch. It is also used by the Italians for picture-frames, because no other wood gives gilding such force and brilliancy. We are told that this is the reason why their gilding on wood is so much superior to ours.

In Switzerland they cover the roofs of their houses with shingles made of Larch. These are usually cut about one foot square and half an inch in thickness, which they nail to the rafters. At first the roof appears white, but in the course of two or three years it becomes as black as coal, and all the joints are stopped by the resin which the sun extracts from the pores of the wood. This shining varnish renders the roof impenetrable to wind or rain: this is the chief covering, and, some say, an incombustible one. From the Larch, too, is extracted what is commonly called Venice turpentine. This substance, or natural balsam, flows at first without incision; when it has done dropping the poor people make incisions, at about two or three feet from the ground, into the trunk of the trees, and into these they fix narrow troughs, about twenty inches long; the end of these troughs is hollow, like a ladle, and in the middle is a small hole bored for the turpentine to run into a receiver which is placed below it. The people who gather it, visit the tree, morning and evening, from the end of May to September, to collect the turpentine out of the receivers. When it flows out of the tree the turpentine is clear like water, and of a yellowish white; but as it becomes older it thickens, and changes to a citron colour. It is procured in great abundance in the neighbourhood of Lyons, and in the valley of St. Martin, near Lucerne, Switzerland. It is only after the tree has attained the thickness of ten or twelve inches in diameter, that it is thought worth while to collect the turpentine; and if the tree remain in vigorous growth, it will continue, for forty or fifty years, to yield annually seven or eight pounds of turpentine.

The cones of the Larch, intended for seed, ought to be gathered towards the latter end of November, and then kept in a dry place till the following spring, when, being spread on a cloth and exposed to the sun, or laid before the fire, the scales will open and shed their seed. These should be sown on a border exposed to the east, where they will be affected by the morning sun only, as the plants do not prosper so well where the sun lies much on them. In autumn the young plants may be pricked out into other beds, as soon as they have shed their leaves, at the distance of six inches each way. In two years the young trees will be ready to plant where they are intended to stand; then they need not be more than eight or ten feet apart from each other, but at less distance on exposed situations. It is now well-known, that the Larch will grow in wild and barren situations better than in a luxuriant soil; and this tree is even apt to grow top-heavy in too much shelter and nourishment. No tree has been introduced into Britain with such remarkable success as the Larch. Phillips says, "The face of our country has, within the last thirty years, been completely changed by the numerous plantations of Larch that have sprung up on every barren spot of these kingdoms, from the southern shores to the extremity of the north, and from the Land's End to the mouth of the Thames. So great has been the demand for young trees of this species of pine, that one nurseryman in Edinburgh raised above five million of these trees in the year 1796. We have introduced no exotic tree that has so greatly embellished the country in general. Its pale and delicate green, so cheerfully enlivening the dark hue of the fir and the pine, and its elegant spiral shape, contrasting with the broad-spreading oak, is a no less happy contrast; whilst its stars of fasciculate foliage are displayed to additional advantage, when neighbouring with the broad-leaved Æsculus, the glossy holly, the drooping birch, or the tremulous aspen."

Sir T. D. Lauder considers that "The Larch is unquestionably by much the most enduring timber we have. It is remarkable, that whilst red wood or heart wood is not formed at all in the other resinous trees till they have lived for many years, the larch, on the other hand, begins to make it soon after it is planted; and whilst you may fell a Scotch fir of thirty years old, and find no red wood in it, you can hardly cut down a young Larch large enough to be a walking-stick, without finding just such a proportion of red wood, compared to its diameter as a tree, as you will find in the largest Larch in the forest, when compared to its diameter. To prove the value of the Larch as a timber-tree, we believe, at the suggestion of the then Duke of Athol, posts of equal thickness and strength, some of Larch and others of oak, were driven down facing the river-wall, where they were alternately covered with water by the effect of the tide, and left dry by its fall. This species of alternation is the most trying of all circumstances for the endurance of timber, and accordingly the oaken posts decayed, and were twice renewed in the course of a very few years, whilst those which were made of Larch remained altogether unchanged." Of the Larch, Mr. Sang remarks that it "bears the ascendency over the Scotch pine in the following important circumstances: that it brings double the price, at least per measurable foot; that it will arrive at a useful timber size in one half, or a third part, of the time in general which the fir requires; and, above all, that the timber of the Larch, at thirty or forty years old, when planted in a soil and climate adapted to the production of perfect timber, is, in every respect, superior in quality to that of the fir at a hundred years old." On experimental observation, the Larch has been found, in Scotland, to increase annually, at six feet from the ground, about one inch and a half in circumference, on the trunks of trees from ten to fifty years of age. In the course of fifty years the tree will attain the height of eighty feet or upwards; and, in its native habitats, according to Willdenow, "it lives from one hundred and fifty to two hundred years."

"Though we should least expect to find such a quality in a resinous tree like the Larch, it has been proved to make a beautiful hedge, and to submit with wonderful patience to the shears. We once saw a very pretty fence of this description in a gentleman's pleasure-grounds near Loch Lomond. The trees were planted at equal distances from each other, and being clipped, were half cut through towards the top, and bent down over each other, and, in, many instances, the top shoot of one had insinuated itself into that adjacent to it, so as to have become corporeally united to it; and, strange as it may seem, we actually found one top that had so inserted itself, which, having been rather deeply cut originally by the hedge-bill, had actually detached itself from its parent stock, and was now growing, grafted on the other, with the lower part of it pointing upwards into the air!"—Sir T. D. Lauder.

There are ten or more varieties of the Larch in cultivation, but as these are probably only different forms of the same species, it is unnecessary to enumerate them.