CONIFERS 



37 



foliage, or occasionally by 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, ultimately becoming dark gray- 

 brown, and dark chestnut-brown winter-buds about ' in diameter. Bark of young 

 stems thin, dark-colored and scaly, becoming near the base of old trunks 5' or 6' thick 

 and breaking 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 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 

 generally at elevations between 2000 and 7000 above the 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 Oregon; most abundant and of its 

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

 Montana, 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 1-angled, rigid, short-pointed, pale blue-green, l'-iy long. Flowers : 

 staminate oblong, with pale yellow anthers; pistillate ovate-oblong, with dark red or 

 occasionally pale yellow-green scales and dark purple bracts abruptly contracted 

 into elongated slender tips. Fruit ovate, rather acute, l^'-2' long, snbsessile or 

 raised on slender stalks coated with hoary tomentum, with dark reddish purple or 

 rarely green erose scales, fringed and covered on their lower surface with matted 

 hairs and 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, ^' long and about half as long as their light red lustrous 

 wings broadest near the base with nearly parallel sides. 



A tree, usually 40-50 C but occasionally 75 high, with a trunk generally 18'-20' 

 but rarely 3-^ in diameter, and remote elongated exceedingly tough persistent 



