The Larches 



ferred habitat, cold swamps and northern slopes of mountains. 

 Distribution, Newfoundland and Hudson Bay west across the 

 Rocky Mountains ; south into Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and 

 Pennsylvania. Uses: Posts, telegraph poles, railroad ties and 

 ships' timbers. 



The tamarack loves the Northern mountain slopes and the 

 cold swamps of Labrador and Canada and our Northern States. 

 It is the bravest of all the conifers, standing erect, a pitiful minia- 

 ture of its true self, on the very edge of the Arctic tundras, a 

 line that no tree dares overstep. Its companions, the black 

 spruce. Balm of Gilead and an Arctic willow, are prostrate at its 

 feet. In American lawns trees 60 feet high are often seen. But 

 compared with the European tree this one is not a horticultural 

 success. The mark of its life struggle with adversity is on the 

 species. Even seedlings coddled m nursery rows have sparse 

 crowns of unsymmetrical growth. In rich soil and among lux- 

 uriant oaks and pines and thick-leaved maples the tamarack 

 looks ragged and forlorn. It is homesick' for the cold, wet soil 

 and the ble:ik wind and the valiant company of its kinsmen. It 

 is an artistic and an ethical mistake to set one of these trees by 

 itself. Plantations of it are justifiable. 



Mountain bogs too deep to measure are covered with tama- 

 rack. The fibrous roots were the Indian's thread ; tough and 

 fine as a shoemaker's "waxed end," it sewed the canoe of birch, 

 making a seam that scarcely needed the wax of the balsam to 

 make it water tight. Hiawatha sang : 



"Give me of your roots, O Tamarack 1 

 Of your fibrous roots, O Larch Tree 1 

 My canoe to bind together 

 So to bind the ends together 

 That the water may not enter 

 That the water may not wet me." 



The flowers of the tamarack are not conspicuous, but they 

 repay the one who looks for them. The yellow staminate clus- 

 ters, like little powdery knobs, soon fall, but the pistillate ones, 

 conical, with green bracts alternating with rosy scales, are beau- 

 tiful along the twig against the lettuce green of the opening 

 foliage clusters. Erect and with scales spread, they catch the 

 flying pollen; then close their scales and "hang their heads" 

 throughout the summer. Under the rosy scales the seeds are 



60 



