Part 17

The Larch (1) was brought to Britain in the seventeenth century from its home on the high mountains of Germany, Austria, and Italy. It has taken kindly to our cheerless climate, and now covers acres of what was once barren moorland.

A few years after Larches are planted the long flexible branches of the young trees meet and form a thicket into which little light or air can enter, and the weeds and heather growing round the tree roots are stifled. Each winter the Larch sheds on the bare ground millions of its tiny needle-leaves, which enrich the soil.

After the young trees have grown to a certain height the forester thins the plantation; he cuts down a number of the young trees, so that those which remain may have more room to grow, and he removes all the withered branches near the ground. This allows the sunshine to reach the soil, and soon after a crop of soft, fine grass is seen carpeting the ground. Sheep and cattle can now be pastured where a short time before there grew nothing but heather and weeds.

Look at a Larch plantation in winter time, and you will think that all the trees are dead. The Pines and the Firs are resting, and the Oaks and Beeches seem asleep, but their branches do not have the dead, withered look of the Larch trees. Come again early in spring, and you will see a wonderful change. These dead twigs are now a pale glossy brown, so glossy that they might have been varnished. Try to pull one, and you will find how tough and sound it is; only where the twig joins the branch can you separate it from the tree; and what a delightful smell of turpentine remains on your fingers after gathering the Larch twigs!

In the trunk of this tree there are stores of turpentine, tiny lakes of it, which are of considerable value. In Italy, where the Larch trees grow to great size, small holes are bored through the trunk to the very heart of the tree, and a thin pipe is put in. Then a can is hung on the end of the pipe, and the pure turpentine juice drops steadily into the can. It is then strained, and is sold just as it comes from the tree.

Early in April the Larch tree begins to get ready for summer; it is always one of the first trees to awaken at the call of spring. On each flexible twig there appear little brown scaly knobs like small beads, placed either singly or in pairs with a short space between each bead. In a few days these scaly beads burst open, and a tuft of vivid green leaves (2), like the fringes round the mouth of a sea-anemone, peeps out. These leaves are soft and flat and slender, very different from the hard needles of the Pine and the harsh swords of the Fir trees, and they grow in tufts, thirty or forty together, rising from the centre of the scaly brown bead. Each tuft is of the brightest green. So the Larch tree is a very vision of spring in the dark Fir plantations, while the leaf buds of many other trees are only awakening from their winter sleep.

In the hedgerows the Hawthorns are in full leaf, the stamen flowers cluster on the boughs of the Elm, and the Hazel and Willow catkins dangle their tails in the wind; but the forest trees remain sombre and gloomy, and the young Larch seems gay as the sunlight among them. As the season advances the Larch tree leaves become darker, and they fall early in winter. We have only one other cone-bearing tree which is not evergreen, and that is the Cypress.

After the leafy tufts appear you will notice that some of the scaly brown beads have not produced any leaves; instead they have become tiny oval catkins (3), which are made up of a crowd of small yellow grains. These catkins are the stamen flowers, and in the yellow grains, which are the heads of the stamens, is prepared the dust powder which the seed flowers require to assist them in getting ready the new seed.

On the same twig, and not far from the stamen catkins, you see a beautiful deep rose-red seed catkin (4). This tiny rose-red catkin is very lovely among the brilliant green tufts of leaves; no other cone-bearing tree has anything so attractive to show us. At first the catkin scales are soft and fleshy; they overlap each other very loosely, and from the base of each scale there rises a bright green point like a single needle-leaf.

In a few weeks the catkin has become a young cone (5), which looks like a small rosy egg sitting erect on a bent footstalk, then the rose-pink colour fades from the cone, and the scales become hard and woody. Behind each scale lie two tiny white seeds with wings, and there is a coating of sticky resin over these seeds to keep them dry. The ripe cones (6) remain on the tree for years, long after the seeds have been blown away on their transparent wings by the wind.

The crossbill often builds his nest in a Larch tree. He is particularly fond of Larch tree seeds, and is very clever at picking them out of the ripe cones.

The trunk of a full-grown Larch is reddish brown in colour, and it is covered with a rough, scaly bark, which is often hung with hoary tufts of pale grey lichen.

Larch wood is very valuable, and is used for many purposes. It is very tough, and does not rot in water. Joiners tell us there are fewer knots in planks of Larch than in those of either Silver Fir or Spruce. Wood knots are scars which occur where a dead branch has fallen from the tree, and builders complain that when the tree is sawn into planks, the knots shrink and fall out, leaving a round hole. This reduces the value of the wood; but in the Larch planks the knots are said not to come away from the surrounding wood.

PLATE XXI

THE SPRUCE FIR

Although the Scotch Pine is sometimes called the Scotch Fir, the latter name is generally admitted to be a mistake. It was given long ago by people who had not seen the real Fir trees, and who did not know how different they are from the Pines. It is several hundred years since the Spruce Fir was brought to this country, but it is not one of our native trees, like the Scotch Pine, the Yew, and the Juniper.

The Spruce (1) is one of our tallest trees; it loves to grow on ground many thousand feet above the level of the sea; and in Switzerland and Norway there are great forests of these slender, soldier-like trees, clothing the sides of the giant snow mountains. With us it does not grow so abundantly, but you will find many Spruce Firs mingling with the Scotch Pine in the large woods of our Scotch Highlands.

The Spruce Fir has a very straggling root which does not penetrate far into the ground; it creeps along close under the surface, and intertwines itself with any other tree roots in the neighbourhood. This does not give it a very firm hold, and after great gales you sometimes find a broad path opened in the Fir woods, which has been made by the Spruce trees falling in the track of the storm.

THE SPRUCE FIR

1. Spruce Fir Tree 2. Leaf Spray 3. Stamen Flowers 4. Seed Flower 5. Cone 6. Seed Scale 7. Growth caused by an Insect]

It is a very straight tree, with a smooth scaly bark of a reddish brown colour; from each side of the trunk slender branches grow straight out like the spokes of a wheel; but each branch rises a little way above the last as the steps rise in a ladder. These branches are very slender, and at first they sweep downwards in graceful curves; but at the tips they all turn upward, so that the points look toward the sky.

The branches get smaller and smaller as the tree grows higher, which gives it the appearance of a pyramid, and at the very top there stands a single upright branch like a spear. This spear-like tip is one of the distinctive features of the Spruce Fir.

The leaves (2) are short and flat and hard, and they are rather prickly to touch. They do not grow in pairs or bundles, as in the Scotch Pine or the Larch; they are placed singly and very close together all round the twig. The twigs grow almost opposite each other on the young sprays, and each spray hangs straight down from the main branch, which looks as if a parting had been made along its centre and the sprays combed evenly to either side. From a distance the Spruce tree branches resemble drooping feathers which curve skyward at the tips.

The Spruce Fir has two kinds of flowers. In May or June, if you look at the tips of the drooping sprays which grew last year, you will see two or three little oval catkins of a pretty yellowish pink colour nestling among the hard, flat leaves. These are the stamen flowers (3), and when ripe they will burst open and scatter a great deal of yellow pollen dust.

The seed flowers (4) grow in cones, and are found at the end of this year’s shoots. It is by these cones you will most readily recognise the Spruce Fir. You remember that in the Scotch Pine the full-grown cones were grey and woody, with tightly-pressed lips, and that these lips were very thick and curled upwards when the cone opened?

In the Fir trees the scales of the ripe cones (5) are like thin glossy brown paper. Each scale ends in two sharp little teeth, and the scales are not tightly pressed together, but overlap each other loosely, so that you could put the blade of a knife under each. The woody cones are always found in Pine trees, and the papery cones are characteristic of the Firs.

In the Spruce Fir these cones are about six inches long, with blunt tips, and when full grown they hang from the sprays. Do not forget to notice this, as in some Fir trees the full-grown cones are seated upright on the branches. Under each scale there lie two little seeds (6), with large pale brown wings; these seeds require over a year to ripen, then the wind blows them from the loosened cone scales to many a strange resting-place, where they take root, and a new tree begins to grow.

Sometimes you may see strange leafy-looking bunches (7) like soft, badly-made cones on the young sprays. These are caused by an insect which lays its eggs in the young leaf bud and destroys its graceful shape.