Subalpine larch -- Larix lyallii
Autumn in the Pacific Northwest is all green trees and gray skies. Coming to the Northwest as an adult after growing up in Minnesota, I dismissed the thought of any fall color. It obviously wouldn’t match the foliar blaze on the ridge along Lake Superior. I had lived in New England one October, a place where leaf tourism is a boon for small towns. Moving to southeast Alaska, I knew it would be green and I was mostly right. When I moved to Washington two years later, I knew it would be green and I was mostly right. While other parts of the country turn red, orange, and yellow, the Pacific Northwest would look just as it always does. But over the past five years I have learned two things and been reminded of one. The first: fall color can occur below eye level. The second: muted colors can look brilliant among evergreens. The third: there are exceptions to every rule. Washington has larches, and larches are trees with amazing fall color.
Two species of larch grow in Washington. Of the two, western larch (Larix occidentalis) is taller and more prolific, covers a much larger area, and occupies a lower elevation making it most accessible and thus more culturally and economically important. While subalpine larch (Larix lyallii) lags behind its relative in certain aspects, it makes up for it in sheer aesthetics. But it’s not really a difference in how the individual trees look because aside from size, there isn’t much difference in appearance. It’s all about where they grow. To see a grove of western larch as they glow yellow in their mid-elevation mixed forest home east of the Cascade divide is beautiful. To see subalpine larch dotted as they are around a high mountain tarn is beyond beautiful. Theirs is an awesome landscape that would take your breath away on its own. Yellow autumnal spires simply set it off completely. Subalpine larches in autumnal peak possess that intangible quality the best of nature offers that can lift the viewer’s spirit instantaneously.
I have been fascinated by larches since I first became really aware of them as a college student. Minnesota is home to one species of larch, the tamarack (Larix laricina) whose large and predominately Canadian range dips south into some northern states. A green, cone bearing tree that in the summer is easily mistaken as an evergreen drops its needles for winter after turning yellow in the fall. That is an unusual trait that I was excited to learn about. It’s a strange adaptation that only a small number of tree species across the planet have taken. Dropping needles in the fall presents both challenges and opportunities. The energy cost of annually replacing needles is high compared to an evergreen which retains needle for many years. However, winter winds and freezing temperatures do damage to even the hardiest evergreen needles and the energy that evergreens use to create and sustain their thick, waxy needles is very high. Ultimately these are just two different strategies for coping with the same problem and both work well.
Larches though are the hardiest trees on earth, so there must be something to dropping needles and encasing new growth in thick protective buds through winter. They grow right to the northern tree line, where the final stunted, weather beaten tree finally gives way in the vast tundra of the north. The single northern-most tree on earth, a Dahurian larch (Larix gmelinii), is found in Russia at 73° N, a line north of even the farthest reaches of Alaska. And they survive in areas where the temperature can plummet to -90° F, which is almost unbelievable. The tamarack, though growing in comparably mild winter habitats also exhibits the tendency for extremes growing as they do in acidic, waterlogged bogs where most other plants struggle. And so given this company for family, it’s no wonder that subalpine larches themselves grow higher up on the mountains of the North Cascades and Canadian Rockies than any other tree. Though they intermingle with other trees to an extent, they also find a home beyond the elevation where other trees are finally contorted into oblivion by the elements.
All of that to say I love larches and above all subalpine larches.