DECIDUOUS CONIFERS

LARCH DECIDUOUS FOLIAGE

EUROPEAN LARCH

Monday, 9:00 AM.  33 degrees F at the ferry dock, 28 on the back porch.  Wind NW, calm at present  The sky is cloudy and overcast, the humidity 79%.  The barometer is just beginning to fall gently, now at 36.45".  Highs today mid 30's, warming a few degrees tomorrow, the sun appearing this afternoon.  The balance of the week will have mixed skies with chances of snow flurries or rain Wednesday night and rain on Friday.  Today is quite tolerable with no wind.
   One of the great transformations of the Northland has just occurred. The tamaracks, Larix laricina, in the Pine Family, have changed from green to gold and many have lost their needles entirely.  As you probably know, the tamarack, or larch, is a deciduous conifer…it loses its needles in the winter, so it is not, in any real sense, an “evergreen.” It is a true tree of the far northern boreal forests but ranges down into the Northeast and the Lake States.

   I’m not sure what the evolutionary advantage might be to losing its needle-leaves, when almost all other conifers keep them all winter to good advantage, so they can photosynthesize at least on warmer days.  We could create or find some theory to explain it, but I prefer just to enjoy the anomaly and the beauty of the golden trees in fall.
   Another Larix species is the European larch, Larix decidua, quite similar but with larger, pendulous cones and a somewhat more formal shape. It is equally hardy. Our neighbor has a nice specimen. The Japanese larch, Larix leptolepis, is also a beautiful tree.  These trees are all closely related, and probably all evolved from the same parentage, either differentiating as the original species moved into new territories with differing climates, or evolved in place as climates changed. 

   All things considered, I prefer our native species for landscaping purposes and of course for restoration projects.  All of these trees need plenty of room to grow.

   Another deciduous conifer is the southern bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, not hardy this far north, but a very beautiful and useful tree; as is the "living fossil" dawn redwood, Megasequoia glyptosroboides, found in Jurassic fossil formations and thought to be extinct until it was found growing in China in the 1940's. 

   A conifer which goes the opposite direction entirely is another living fossil, Ginko biloba, which has broad flat leaves, rather than needles.