Conifers can lose leaves and still be pretty

Not all conifers are evergreens, and deciduous conifers include some of the most beautiful trees. A beautiful, deciduous conifer? Most people plant conifers because they keep their leaves year-round. Nonetheless, deciduous conifers make up for their winter nakedness with stately form and fast growth.

But there's really no need to apologize for these plants' autumn loss of leaves. The seasonal changes of their leaves is endearing. The dainty needles are especially bright and cheery as they unfold in spring, toning down a bit in summer, but never taking on the somber look of most evergreen conifers. Autumn color of these trees ranges from dazzling yellow to rich ochre.

Larch, sometimes called tamarack, is one deciduous conifer. Small branchlets studded with tufts of leaves dangle from the sturdy limbs. As the needles first emerge in spring, they are chartreuse. Larches are extremely cold-hardy plants but do need sun and moist, acidic soil.

The Bald Cypress Family contains two other deciduous conifers, bald cypress and dawn redwood. Both grow into tall spires and, as if to make up for winter bareness, have trunks the color of rich mahogany peeling off in long vertical shreds. They tolerate very wet or dry soils, as long as the soils are acidic.

Bald cypress is native from the Middle Atlantic region south, but is hardy farther north. This tree even tolerates standing water, in which case it grows bare wooden "knees" a few feet up out of the water near the plants. These "knees" may help submerged roots get oxygen. The name "bald" comes about because winds sometimes take just the tops off trees, giving them rounded rather than pointy heads.

Dawn redwood was once the most abundant conifer in western North America, but seemingly disappeared from everywhere on the face of the earth 25 million years ago. The tree was first described, in 1941, from Pliocene fossils found near Tokyo. In the 1940s a single, living dawn redwood tree -- a "living fossil" -- was found growing in a remote village in the Szechuan province. Later a whole grove of them was discovered, and the tree was soon propagated for planting in other parts of the world. From the size of today's trees, you would not think that the oldest of these could not have been planted before about 1950. But young dawn redwood trees can grow 5 feet a year -- not bad for any tree, especially a conifer.