Larix...Not to Be Confused with Dr. Seuss's Lorax

According to the highly respected Encyclopedia Britannica (you remember what an encyclopedia is...don't you?) the larch is any of 10 to 12 species of coniferous trees of the genus Larix. One species is found only in the Himalayas.  Another is known to grow in Siberia.  It is a plant that, like a monk, seems to need and want the simplest of life styles.  The most widely distributed North American species is the tamarack, hackmatack or eastern larch.  But the Pacific northwest is home to the western larch L. occidentalis which I think was the one I saw planting it roots so firmly in the harsh mountain limestone just at timberline in the Canadian Rockies.  See the golden sprays that look like aspen, and glow in the gentle sun above the evergreens in the photo below?  They cling to the mountain rim with such tenacious life and delicate beauty.

This tree is so unusual because it looks like a conifer and has needles and cones like a conifer, but changes color in the fall and drops its needles like a deciduous tree.  It also is unusual in that the needles are soft as kittens' whiskers when you touch them.  If you want to see this fantastic tree, you must pay your penance by hiking up the mountain past mud, grizzlies and snow into the thin and biting mountain air.  Since you may not want to do that, I will post a few of the beautiful rewarding trees I saw on my hike in their bronze fall glory.

It is no surprise that they inspire poetry from great poets.

Asides

Though the season's begun to speak

Its long sentences of darkness,

The upswept boughs of the larch

Bristle with gold for a week,

And then there is only the willow

To make bright interjection,

Its drooping branches decked

With thin leaves, curved and yellow,

Till winter, loosening these

With a first flurry and bluster,

Shall scatter across the snow-crust

Their dropped parentheses.

by Richard Wilber