Larches

 

This past October my husband and I took a trip to New England to see the turning foliage. We were driving through the northern part of Vermont when we passed through a grove of what appeared to be conifers, and yet, all the needles were yellow. Coming from New Mexico, where bark beetles are decimating the piñon and ponderosa pine trees and douglas-fir tussock moth is wreaking havoc among fir trees, we wondered why all these pines were dying.

You east coast people are chuckling at the naivete of this westerner. Or maybe it’s a northerner vs southerner thing. Either way, you probably know that the trees we were passing weren’t dying—they’re larches.

Most conifers are evergreen—they hold their leaves throughout the year. Larches are among the few deciduous conifers. That means when autumn arrives, they join the maples, elms and oaks in turning colors and then shedding their leaves. Larch leaves, like many other pine trees, are needle-like, either growing singly on long shoots with several buds or in dense clusters of 20 to 50 needles on short shoots with only a single bud. On young trees, the bark is smooth, but grows thick and scaly with age. Larches can live to be very old. The wood of the Larch wood is resinous, tough and durable enough to be used in boatbuilding, garden furniture, and fencing. Larches are also harvested for arabinogalactan, a thickener used in food, rosin, turpentine, and essential oils.

Larches, along with pines and spruces, make up the boreal forest, which the world's largest land biome.

In North America, it covers most of the northern United States including Alaska, and inland Canada. Almost half of the forests in the Soviet Union are made of larches, making it the most abundant genus of trees on earth.

The larches that we saw in northern Vermont go by the scientific name Larix laricina, and have many common names. They are called the tamarack, hackmatack, eastern larch, black larch, red larch, and American larch. Whatever their name, this species lives in Canada from the eastern Yukon and Inuvik, into the Northwest Territories, and east into Newfoundland. In the United States, they live in central Alaska, the upper northeast from Minnesota to Maine, and as far south as West Virginia.

While the yellow needled larches we saw were not dying, there are things that attack these beautiful trees. The larvae of the larch pug moth feeds on this tree, and the large larch bark beetle can be harmful, especially larch trees that have already been weakened by drought or other factors. When late spring frosts cause minor injuries to the trees, larches can develop a fungal canker disease, and a mushroom found in Europe, North America and northern Asia causes internal wood rot in some of the larch species.

Larches are northern trees, abundant in the taigas surrounding the north pole. They do not grow in New Mexico, so it’s not surprising that my husband and I didn’t recognize them. We didn’t even notice them when we were in Maine during the summer, when their needles were as green as the piñons and ponderosas were used to, but in fall they add to the show. We’re glad we’ve made their acquaintance.

In addition to being a native New Mexican, Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former Language Arts and Social Studies teacher who now writes historical and contemporary novels for middle grade through adult readers. While she hasn't figured out where to use larches in her writing, many of her stories began through the inspiration of travel. You can read more about Jennifer and her writing on her blog.