Our Double Take series is a collaboration with Harvard Art Museums, pairing objects from both collections: a plant from the Arnold Arboretum + a work of art from the Harvard Art Museums.
This time, we’re looking at two larches—one rendered in delicate lines, the other rooted in soil.
At the Harvard Art Museums, the exhibition “Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black” includes Sandra Allen’s “Auspice,” a detailed rendering of a larch, with its characteristic cones, branches, and wintertime lack of needles. Just a few miles away, the Arnold Arboretum grows its own Larix laricina, a species native to North America and one of the few deciduous conifers—shedding its needles each fall in a blaze of gold.
“In addition to this American larch, or tamarack, that was collected in 1982 in Quebec, Canada, you’ll find another 146 larch trees in the Arnold Arboretum’s living collection,” says Michael Dosmann, Keeper of the Living Collections. “These represent six different species collected from nine countries across Asia, Europe, and North America. The oldest larch at the Arboretum is a Larix occidentalis, the western larch, which came from Oregon in 1881.”
In the drawing, the artist’s line captures a moment of observation—a larch distilled to contour and gesture. In the Arboretum, the tree rewrites itself year after year, exchanging needles, shifting colors, and revealing new textures with every season. One larch is shaped by graphite; the other by time.
Visit American larch (349-82*A) in the Arboretum’s conifer collection.
Visit Sandra Allen’s “Auspice” (2005.170) in “Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black” at the Harvard Art Museums, from now until 1/18.