Toro, what are you trying to get at?

I have a ton of dwarfs. Cherry Valley is probably my largest cultivar. I gave away my Jacobsen's Pyramid.

They (Larix laricina) are native here with very large specimens growing around the lakes near by as they seem to prefer, based upon their native habitat, cool summers, cold winters, well drained soil with decent soil moisture. Even though the habitat map shows it, I rarely see them growing in the clay soils of SE WI but more so in the sandy soils in most other parts of the state.

Larix get their fall color quite late and it usually turns a vibrant yellow. Overall I am a fan of this species.

Tom wisco has quite a few hybrids growing north of me. Hopefully he gets that camera out someday to share the plantings. Otherwise I'm just going to track him down and take pics my elf as its going to be an impressive sight in a few years.

You get Taxodium, we get Larix. I don't see Larix doing well in your climate. By no means is this a heat tolerant plant.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:444311}}

I'm actually surprised at your comment about Larix laricina, whaas. The few places I've seen them growing (upstate New York, Alaska) have been very wet places... bogs, lake-sides. *Maybe* you could call the lake-sides "well drained" but certainly not the bogs.

Right, famartin, L larcina grows native in poorly-drained bogs in high-altitude Garrett Co, MD. I wouldn't try them here, tho -- can't take heat. A true alpine tree at this latitude like red spruce.

Japanese larch grows well here -- one I planted 10 yrs ago is 25'+. The hybrid Dunkeld larch grew well initially, but has suffered a major decline from I-don't-know-what -- growth last couple yrs is negligible and foliage is scant. It'll have to come down.

I'd avoid L. laricina.

L. kaempferi is probably the best of the commonly available for you. It's even borderline here sometimes. There are some larger ones around here.

L. decidua is more dicey but might also be OK.

L. mastersiana should do just fine but is near-impossible to find. I think Forestfarm might have some this fall, I am planning to call and check.

My experience with L. laricina is it tolerates very wet soils and periodic, short term flooding but was killed by long term flooding. The Mississipi flooded a few years back and backed up into our lake property. My larches were in the water for 1+ month and they all died

European and Japanese seem to do well around here and seem more adaptable.

If you're looking for deciduous conifers, I'd try Pseudolarix ahead of Larix in the St Louis area, espeically L. laricina. I planted L. decidua and kaempferi at my old place, and they were both incredibly fast growers -- too fast. Pseudolarix is much, much slower, than the true larch -- too slow. Yes, it's hard to make me happy. ;)

bulletproof in my z5 MI... last winter z4 ...

my list includes:

Larix dahuria 'Prince Rupprechtii' PROPER NAME
Larix decidua 'Pendula'
Larix eurolepis 'Varied Directions' -- lost it due to my incompetence the first year or two i was collecting
Larix gmelinii var. olgensis
Larix kaempferi 'Blue Rabbit' -- lost it to lack of proper water i believe
Larix kaempferi 'Diana'
Larix kaempferi 'Pendula'
Larix kaempferi 'Wolterdingen' -- lost it to needle congestion and not cleaning it out
Larix laricina 'Blue Sparkler'
Larix principis-rupprechtii (syn. L. gmelinii var. principis-rupprechtii) -- same as the first .. more names than i can keep track of

and my favorite, and the nomenclature peeps can argue if it is a larix:

Pseudolarix x kampferi (amabilis) -- Golden Larch

as you should recall ... pure sand.. complete fast drainage.. no water after the second year... etc ...

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN MAN?????? ... lol

ken

Local nursery has a very nice large container Pseudolarix that has managed very well over the summer. Actually an excellent price for the size and the growth rate. If I had a place for it, I would be all over it. A tree that needs to be used much more IMHO.

Arktrees

Tornado:

Very good points brought up for you to go with Pseudolarix amabilis. It's quite a tree that I too would argue is more desirable than true larches.

My climate killed its' fair share of larches so I stopped planting them. I got lucky with one however that's doing well that I finally learned to site different from the others. I have it at the bottom of a down slope where the soil doesn't dry out as quickly. I had cones this year and what I thought I planted as kaempferi turned out to be either: gmelini or principis-rupprectii. Our resident conifer expert Resin clued me in on that. He couldn't provide a precise ID but he narrowed it down to one of those.

I find occasional European larch in my area but I'm talking a handful of trees vs. more than a dozen. They are very rare to see & I'm only 60 miles south of Chicago on the other side of the state.

It's going to be way too hot for larch in St. Louis. Pseudolarix amabilis will cruise right through for you.

Dax

Mobot tends to paint a different image of its adaptability in St. Louis.\
http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=a166

farm, the healthiest specimens I see around here have good moisture and are well drained soils. I just haven't seen them growing in water logged soils which tend to be clay soils. This is only specific to what I've seen where in SE WI. There are quite a few monster specimens on hillsides by the lake as well. I'll snap some pics this fall.

I have a big collection of Larix in eastern Ohio. The best have been L. kaempferi and L. laricina. I don't agree that L. laricina is difficult to grow. If you get a local seed source, they can be amazingly fast growing and adaptable. Mine in Ohio are from a NE Ohio source. They are in ordinary soil and getting huge. Overall, L. kaempferi is the easiest to grow. I even have a young one here in north Florida! Pseudolarix grows fine even here. Definitely you should have a Pseudolarix.

Well thanks guys. Maybe the Larix topics get hidden between the piceas and metasequoas. The box stores here don't sell them and I just don't see any so I assumed them to be more rare than they are.

I might try to hunt down a couple small ones and see how they fare.

Maybe I'll plant them next to the crepe myrtle and have a combination nature never intended. One can hate my winter, the other my summer lol.

Larch were always difficult to grow and market because being conifers, they had to be dug before greening out, and being larches, they greened out super-early-often before the nursery field could be worked or even gotten into.. This has started to change with new propagation methods. The ones on my land which I describe below started out as little plug stock.

Tamarack, AKA American larch, is often mistakenly considered only suitable for very wet sites. It will grow in any full-sun spot that has at least moderate moisture. Not talking a dry site per se, just it doesn't have to be saturated. The reason we see tamarack in swamps and bogs so often in nature is that in the full-sun sites that are more well-drained, other even faster-growing deciduous trees such as aspen and birch will typically kick its butt.

Whaas, there are some fantastic "outlier" stands of tamarack right along Highway 41, roughly in the Slinger-Allenton areas. Soon they will be going into their gold fall color, and will be magnificent. That area I speak of is really quite interesting-lowlands within the Kettle Moraine region of our state.

I've got native tamaracks on my land but additionally, I've planted roughly 5000 Larix marschlinsii (formerly L. eurolepis) and these things are simply amazing. The best of them, in the ground now since spring of 2008, are twenty or more feet tall, with long, luxuriant foliage and a golden-orange winter twig color that just doesn't quit. I guess you could say I like these trees!

I'm not much into the garden conifer thing. I like it, it's just not my hobby. But as straight-up trees, whether for forestry purposes like mine are, or just one or two for your yard, larch are where it's at, the one caveat being-as already stated above-not a tree for hot areas.

+oM

I really don't disagree with anything you say, Tom, but I'd still recommend either European or Asian larches ahead of Tamarack for the St Louis area. They take heat & humidity to a whole new level down there. It might work, but I think the odds would be better with the other two. BTW, I drove through northcentral Wisconsin today (Eau Claire to Ashland) and the native larches are glorious. Actually, everything looks quite good.

There are L. kaempferi 20 ft. tall and coning at the University of AL in Huntsville, per the grounds director, obviously they have been there a long time. So they should do well in St. Louis I would think with proper watering.

I am a Larch ignoramus so have nothing much to say. However, although the Autumn colour has been mentioned I don't think anyone has commented on the Spring display of bright purple flowers and the unique green of the new foliage. At least on the ones I see over here.

This post was edited by floral_uk on Sun, Sep 21, 14 at 13:31

You'll get no argument from me, floral uk! I love every phase of these thing's cycle. As far as fall color, there too, while all larch are simply glorious, these marschlinsii have a little something extra-a tendency to have purple and orange tones in with the golden. Fantastic.

Basic, no disagreement with you either: If OP must have a larch, I'd recommend straight kaempferii for his St. Louise site. Been down there enough to know, our heat/humidity isn't on the same level with their's.

+oM

There are sporadic reports of Japanese Larches doing well in the South, but still a relative paucity of them. In St. Louis or points south, Pseudolarix is a better bet.
I've tried many Dunkeld and Japanese over the years. IMHO they probably all have genetic problems from inbreeding. Of course whether those problems manifest depend on the climate...but even in England all of the Japanese larches in forestry are being killed by phytophthora. According to every seed vendor I've contacted, seed for Japanese larches is either coming from China or Europe, not its native home in Japan. The Dunkeld will grow like crazy when happy, but suddenly die when they are not. I had a plant get well over 8' high with a caliper > 1 inch. Dead in a couple weeks when root rot got it. The Japanese ones of commerce behave somewhat similarly, but not as bad. Out of the original 12 of both I've planted, 2 are still doing well. Both the Japanese. I bet if the original Dunkeld cross were remade with native sourced parents (plants for sale now must be F4 or F5) they would be stronger growing.

Larix mastersiana OTOH grows more slowly when young but has been tougher. Even the foliage looks tougher, it's shorter and grayer. Mine survived being moved this spring which is good because neither nursery I sent scions to reported that they were successfully grafted. David Parks insisted on trying them on Pseudolarix because the 2 are "morphologically similar". Not similar enough, apparently. He did do one on Pseudostuga sinensis for me, it sprouted but withered a week later. Maybe I needed a shaded greenhouse. I'm going to try again this winter.

Interesting, davidrt28. If you don't mind saying so, whereabouts are you located?

My marschlinsii are planted in sandy loam which, as far as I've been able to discern, drains quite well, even though the field in question does slope down to a wetland area, and at least some of these larch are near that portion of the site. I'm inclined to think that for conifers generally, the land I happen to have purchased is exceedingly well-suited.

Your comments regarding the current status of crosses leading to the Dunkeld-type trees pretty much mirrors one I've had with the guy up in Minnesota who, so far as I'm aware, is the only source for L. marschklinsii. In fact, he was going to cancel it off his list when seed availability became an issue, going so far as to inquire as to the sexual maturity of my trees. BTW, some cones are happening already. In any case, I'd asked him pretty much the very question as to whether the plants he was offering were really true Dunkeld larch, being several generations away from the initial cross. He took it pretty much in stride that these plants, even though now distant from that F1 generation, were still the genuine article. I like them but I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. Leastways for now, they continue to put on magnificent growth increments each year.

My one caveat with these trees-they seem to have some trunk strength issues when very young. A freakish wind set up out of the north a couple years ago which managed to permanently bend some of these guys, including two or three which are now supine groundcover larch! But in the main, truly exceptional trees by my reckoning.

A little aside: I wouldn't be terribly upset if at some point, my marschlinsii's were to cross with the nearby tamaracks in my woods. I don't know enough about synchronicity of flowering between the two, to know if this is even possible, but I find such thoughts intriguing, if a little opposed to the all-natives bible.

+oM

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Posted by wisconsitom 4/5 WI (My Page) on
Tue, Sep 23, 14 at 8:20

My one caveat with these trees-they seem to have some trunk strength issues when very young. A freakish wind set up out of the north a couple years ago which managed to permanently bend some of these guys, including two or three which are now supine groundcover larch!
***

Same issue w/my Japanese larch yrs ago, tho I attributed it to girdling roots, after which I root-pruned & re-staked it for a few yrs. Straight enough & unstaked now at 25' tall. Withstood the Sandy-storm near-hurricane wind-gusts several yrs ago (still had leaves) w/no problem.

This is the largest Larix kaempferi I've seen in my neck of the woods~12" dbh and close to 40 feet in height. Beaver are the biggest pest I've had to contend with and wire cages are a must. Seedlings were purchased at Drakes Crossing Nursery, Silverton OR.

I have a bunch of Larix laricina that I planted as liners. Like floral_UK and WITom I love the look of this tree throughout the growing season - the colors, the texture of the feathery foliage, and the openness of the canopy - and in winter it just sort of fades into the background.