''Larix griffithii'', the Sikkim larch, is a species of
larch, native to the eastern
Himalaya in eastern
Nepal,
Sikkim, western
Bhutan and southwestern
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
(
Xizang), growing at in altitude.
It is sometimes called the Himalayan larch, not to be confused with ''
Larix potaninii var. himalaica'', which is generally known as the 'Langtang larch'.
Description
It is a medium-sized
deciduous coniferous
Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All extant ...
tree reaching tall, with a trunk up to in diameter. The crown is slender conic; the main branches are level to upswept, the side branchlets pendulous from them. The shoots are dimorphic, with growth divided into long shoots (typically long) and bearing several
buds, and short shoots only long with only a single bud. The
leaves
A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...
are needle-like, light glaucous green, long; they turn bright yellow to orange before they fall in the autumn, leaving the pale yellow-brown shoots bare until the next spring.
The
cones are erect, ovoid-conic, long, with 50-100 seed scales, each seed scale with a long exserted and reflexed basal bract; they are dark purple when immature, turning dark brown and opening to release the
seeds when mature, 5–7 months after pollination. The old cones commonly remain on the tree for many years, turning dull grey-black.
Taxonomy
It has 2 accepted
variants;
* ''Larix griffithii'' var. ''griffithii''
* ''Larix griffithii'' var. ''speciosa''
Synonyms
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
of the variants; include ''Abies griffithiana''
J. D. Hooker ex Lindley & Gordon and ''Larix griffithiana''
hort. ex Carrière.
Trees to the northeast of the range in eastern Bhutan and Xizang have been separated as ''
Larix kongboensis'' (Mill 1999); they differ in smaller cones long. This taxon has been accepted by the ''Flora of China'' but not widely elsewhere.
References and external links
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1768686
griffithii
Flora of Northeast India
Trees of Nepal
Deciduous conifers