larch

Etymology

From early modern German Larche, Lärche, from Middle High German larche, from Old High German larihha, early borrowing from Latin larix, itself possibly of Gaulish origin. In the first century AD, Vitruvius wrote that the tree was given the Latin name "larigna" when the Romans discovered it at the town of Larignum.

noun

1. (countable) A coniferous tree, of genus Larix, having deciduous leaves, in fascicles.
   The Larch-tree, with us, groweth slowly, and to be found in few places; it hath a rugged bark, and boughts that branch in good order, with divers small yellowish bunched eminences, set thereon at several distances, from whence tufts of many small, long, and narrow smooth leaves do yearly come forth; it beareth among the green leaves many beautiful flowers, which are of a fine crimson colour […] 1665, John Rea, Flora, London: J.G. Marriott, Book III, Chapter 20, pp. 235-236
   1716, Nicholas Rowe (translator), The Ninth Book of Lucan in John Dryden, Miscellany Poems, London: Jacob Tonson, Volume 6, p. 67, The Gummy Larch-Tree, and the Thapsos there, Wound-wort and Maiden-weed, perfume the Air.
   Thus the Birch Canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest’s life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, Book 7
   Joan was thinking: ‘She looks like a tree […] it must be the green dress. But her eyes are like water, all greeny and shadowy and deep looking—a tree near a pool, that’s what she’s like, a tall tree. A beech tree? No, that’s too spready—a larch tree, that’s Elizabeth; a larch tree just greening over.' 1924, Radclyffe Hall, The Unlit Lamp, Chapter 5, Part 1
   Have a tree or two the witches particularly like, such as the alder, larch, cypress and hemlock; then, to counteract any possible evil effects, there must be a holly, yew, hazel, elder, mountain ash or juniper. 1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 273
   During the early 1980s to early 1990s, and especially in the long drought period of 1982-3, extensive fires swept through natural forests in many parts of the world. While the ravaging fires in Australia and Europe received wide media coverage, 1 million hectares of larch forests were wiped out on the Ta-hsing-an-ling mountain in north-eastern China (H. Tagawa, personal communication). 1993, Nengah Wirawan, “The Hazard of Fire”, in Harold Brookfield, Yvonne Byron, editors, South-East Asia's Environmental Future: The Search for Sustainability, United Nations University Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 242
2. (uncountable) The wood of the larch.
   Old Peter was up early too, harnessing the little yellow horse into the old cart. The cart was of rough wood, without springs, like a big box fixed on long larch poles between two pairs of wheels. The larch poles did instead of springs, bending and creaking, as the cart moved over the forest track. 1916, Arthur Ransome, “The Christening in the Village”, in Old Peter’s Russian Tales