PINACE.E 33 



A tree, sometimes 180 high, with a tall tapering naked trunk 6-8 in diameter, or on 

 dry soil and exposed mountain slopes usually not more than 100 tall, with a short narrow 

 pyramidal head of small branches clothed with scanty foliage, or occasionally with a larger 

 crown of elongated drooping branches, stout branchlets covered when they first appear with 

 soft pale pubescence, usually soon glabrous, bright orange-brown in their first year, ulti- 

 mately becoming dark gray-brown, and dark chestnut-brown winter-buds about f in 

 diameter. Bark of young stems thin, dark-colored and scaly, becoming near the base of 

 old trunks 5' or 6' thick and broken into irregularly shaped oblong plates often 2 long 

 and covered with thin closely appressed light cinnamon-red scales. Wood very heavy, 

 exceedingly hard and strong, close-grained, very durable in contact with the soil, bright 





Fig. 37 



light red, with thin nearly white sapwood; largely used for railway-ties and fence-posts, 

 and manufactured into lumber used in cabinet-making and the interior finish of buildings. 



Distribution. Moist bottom-lands and on high benches and dry mountain sides gen- 

 erally at elevations between 2000 and 7000 above sea-level, usually singly or in small 

 groves, through the basin of the upper Columbia River from southern British Columbia to 

 the western slopes of the continental divide of northern Montana, and to the eastern slopes 

 of the Cascade Mountains of Washington and northern Oregon; most abundant and of its 

 largest size on the bottom-lands of streams flowing into Flat Head Lake in northern Mon- 

 tana, and in northern Idaho. 



Occasionally planted in the eastern states and in Europe, but in cultivation showing 

 little promise of attaining a large size or becoming a valuable ornamental or timber-tree. 



3. Larix Lyallii Parl. Tamarack. 



Leaves 4-angled, rigid, short-pointed, pale blue-green, 1'-!$' long. Flowers: male 

 short-oblong; female ovoid-oblong, with dark red or occasionally pale yellow-green scales 

 and dark purple bracts abruptly contracted into elongated slender tips. Fruit ovoid, 

 rather acute, 1%'-%' long, subsessile or raised on a slender stalk coated with hoary tomen- 

 tum, with dark reddish purple or rarely green erose scales, fringed and covered on their 

 lower surface with matted hairs at maturity spreading nearly at right angles and finally 

 much reflexed, much shorter than their dark purple very conspicuous long-tipped bracts; 

 seeds full and rounded on the sides, f ' long and about half as long as their light red lustrous 

 wings broadest near the base with nearly parallel sides. 



A tree, usually 25-50 high, with a trunk generally 18'-20' but rarely 3-4 in diameter, 

 and remote elongated exceedingly tough persistent branches sometimes pendulous, devel- 

 oping very irregularly and often abruptly ascending at the extremities, stout branchlets 



