The divine Caesar, being with his army in the neighbourhood of the Alps, and having ordered the towns to furnish supplies, the inhabitants of a fortified stronghold there, called Larignum, trusting in the natural strength of their defences, refused to obey his command.

In front of the gate of this stronghold there was a tower, made of beams of this wood laid in alternating directions at right angles to each other, like a funeral pyre, and built high, so that they could drive off an attacking party by throwing stakes and stones from the top.

When it was observed that they had no other missiles than stakes, and that these could not be hurled very far from the wall on account of the weight, orders were given to approach and to throw bundles of brushwood and lighted torches at this outwork.

The flames soon kindled the brushwood which lay about that wooden structure and, rising towards heaven, made everybody think that the whole pile had fallen.

But when the fire had burned itself out and subsided, and the tower appeared to view entirely uninjured, Caesar in amazement gave orders that they should be surrounded with a palisade, built beyond the range of missiles.

The female cones) of larches are erect, small, 1–9 cm (1⁄2–3+1⁄2 in) long, green, red, or purple, ripening brown and woody- or leathery-textured 5–8 months after pollination; in about half the species the bract scales are long and visible, and in the others, short and hidden between the seed scales.

L. potaninii Batalin L. occidentalis Nuttall L. decidua Miller L. cajanderi Mayr L. griffithii Hooker L. gmelinii (Rupr.)

[13] These are subdivided on the basis of the most recent phylogenetic investigations: Most if not all of the species can be hybridised in cultivation;[16] these hybrids are not discussed by POWO as they are not of natural occurrence.

L. × eurolepis), the Dunkeld larch, a spontaneous artificial hybrid L. decidua × L. kaempferi that arose more or less simultaneously in Switzerland and Scotland in 1901–1904,[17] is by far the best known, being of major importance in forestry in northern Europe.

(larch canker); this is particularly a problem on sites prone to late spring frosts, which cause minor injuries to the tree allowing entry to the fungal spores.

In Canada, this disease was first detected in 1980 and is particularly harmful to an indigenous species larch, the tamarack, killing both young and mature trees.

In late 2009 the disease was first found in Japanese larch trees in the English counties of Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, and has since spread to the south-west of Scotland.

[23] Laricifomes officinalis is another mushroom found in Europe, North America and northern Asia that causes internal wood rot.

However, European Standard EN 350-2 lists larch as slightly to moderately durable; this would make it unsuitable for ground contact use without preservative in temperate climates, and would give it a limited life as external cladding without coatings.

[24] The hybrid Dunkeld larch is widely grown as a timber crop in Northern Europe, valued for its fast growth and disease resistance.