Hello bobert,

Good question. I think you've encountered a case where the meanings in the two languages overlap just partially, which is often the case.

1) Hardwood - implies wood that people use for different purposes, right? So it's safe to translate it as древесина твёрдых пород, твёрдая древесина and the like. It happens that hardwood is MOSTLY provided by non-conifer trees, so the Russian dictionaries say it can be древесина лиственных пород. But it's more logical to say твёрдая древесина, etc. (i.e. the English term is technically more correct). BTHWAY the same applies to softwood.

2) Conifer - comes from Latin and it has the root 'cone' in it. So strictly speaking it's a tree that has cones. Again in Russian the traditional equivalent is хвойные деревья, деревья хвойных пород, etc. One can't say this is the exact equivalent. It just happens MOST of the conifers (trees with cones) have needles (хвоя). So the Russian and English notions do not overlap here.

3) Decidious - from Latin 'dēcidere' to fall down (acc. to Collins dictionary I often use). Strictly speaking, it says nothing of whether it should be leaves or needles (there can be decidious antlers of a deer actually, right?). Due to the fact that most decidious trees have leaves (and are not conifers) in Russian the words лиственные деревья, деревья лиственных пород came to be used. But it's not the exact equivalent of 'decidious'. Again the English word is technically more correct here.

So your phrasing Лиственница -- это хвойное дерево, ежегодно сбрасывающее хвою. - sounds good in Russian I think and expesses the correct idea which corresponds to Although a conifer, larches are deciduous.

Now as for the cultural reference that larches are common and ubiquitous in Russia. It may be true in terms of quantity and areas that larches occupy to the east of the Urals and in Siberia (e.g. large taiga forests). At the same time not so many people live there (taiga is uninhabited forest area). So not so many people have actually seen a larch around because in Russia the European part is most densly populated and we don't find many larches here (at least people can't easily spot a larch here I suppose unless they have a basic knowledge of basic forestry).

Basically what I was trying to say by the translation examples is that we may use different words in different languages for the same idea and these words are very often not 100% equivalents.