Frozen Wonder

 Determined to start more Larix lyallii trees for experimentation, I headed back up to North Idaho in the fall of 2007.  I had already found a tree that was covered in cones, so I tried to time my trip to catch the seeds before they fell out of the cones.

That fall, I called the ranger station in Bonner's Ferry to obtain a permit to collect the seeds.  The ranger actually laughed when I told him that I wanted to collect a few hundred seeds.  "Just take them," he said.

I took a Friday off work and spent a long weekend traveling to North Idaho and back.  I'd never been up there that late in the year, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Here's what greeted me on the trail on the way in:

The track is from black bear and the leaf had fallen from the huckleberry bushes that cover the landscape.  There was only a half-inch of snow, so driving up there wasn't really a problem.   Though the bears were obviously not hibernating yet, I didn't see any large game animals on my hike.

The tree that I'd previously located was a couple of miles in- perched on the edge of a 1000 foot cliff.  I collected dozens of cones that were at the perfect stage.  They were ripe, but had not yet released their seeds.

Once I was back home, I tried germinating some of them, but I was met with failure.  Larix lyallii isn't an easy species to propagate from seed.  I must have just been lucky that first time.  I donated seed to the seed exchange of a local botanical garden, in the hopes of giving growers in other countries access to this uncommon species.  I have to wonder if they had any better luck than I did.

Larch trees tend to have only a couple of decent cone crops per decade- if that.  I am not sure when I'll next be up there at the right time on a good year.  I kick myself for killing that tiny seedling that I had so painstakingly raised for four years.

This blog seems to be turning into an obituary for plants that I've killed.  Depressing.