Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/316

155 and in New England and the Dominion its shortened name of Hemlock is "familiar in the mouths" of the people. The leaves are short, flat, solitary, and endure for two seasons. The cones are but half an inch long, and afford a striking contrast to those of the Sugar-pine (Pinus lambertiana) whose cones are said sometimes to measure two feet long. The peculiar grace of the Hemlock is due to the symmetrically arranged branches, and to their drooping tips; but in later life it becomes rugged, and loses much of its charm. Its wood is not so highly esteemed as its bark, which is useful for tanning.

So frequently do we come across huge plantations of Larch that we might be pardoned for supposing it to be a native tree; but though it was introduced to Britain as an ornamental tree about two hundred and fifty years ago its true home is in the South European Alps. It is singular in the fact of being a deciduous conifer, that is it sheds all its leaves in the autumn; and remains naked until the spring. A larch-wood in winter presents rather a weird and dreary aspect, the grey branches and trunks appearing as if dead and withered, an aspect that is intensified when, as frequently happens, the branches are thickly invested with the lichens Ramalina and Evernia. But in spring the Larch again becomes a thing of beauty, and, as Tennyson sings:—

These "rosy plumelets" are the future cones, and they are very conspicuous on the bare branches. They become ripe by their first Autumn, when they are but little more than an inch in length, rather oval than conical; erect on the branch, and the scales with irregular margins. When first the leaves