PINE FAMILY 



about a central axis ; anthers subglobose, pale yellow, two-celled ; 

 connective pointed. Pistillate flowers oblong, pedunculate ; com- 

 posed of many orbicular rose red scales spirally arranged about a 

 central axis ; each scale in the axil of a pale rose colored bract with 

 a long green tip. Upon each scale lie two naked ovules. 



Cones. Bright chestnut brown, oblong, obtuse, one-half to three- 

 fourths of an inch long and borne on a short, stout, incurved stem. 

 Scales about twenty, the largest near the middle, the smaller at base 

 and apex. Cone falls during second year. Seed one-eighth of an 

 inch long, pale, with pale brown wings broadest in the middle. 



" Give me of your roots, O Tamarack ! 

 Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree ! 

 My canoe to bind together 

 So to bind the ends together 

 That the water may not enter 

 That the water may not wet me." 



HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 



One feature distinguishes the Tamarack from the other 

 northern conifers, it sheds its leaves in the autumn of the 

 year- in which they are produced ; they turn a dull yellow and 

 fall as do those of the poplar and the maple. This is a tree 

 of the swamps and it serves a very valuable purpose in the 

 economy of nature. When in those northern lands where 

 it makes its home, a small lake has silted up from the sur- 

 rounding country and so far dried th'at the rushes disappear 

 from the margin and a coating of soil covers it ; the Tamarack 

 creeps down and takes possession and the result is a Tama- 

 rack swamp. It is often possible to push a pole down ten 

 feet into the mud about the roots of the trees of such a 

 swamp. The roots developed there, 1'ong, tough, stringy are 

 those Hiawatha needed for his canoe, those growing in dryer 

 soil are not so flexible. The Tamarack will go up the hill- 

 side, it can live on dry land, but it loves the swamp and will- 

 ingly yields the hillside to the spruces. In summer a Tama- 

 rack swamp is dark, cool, mossy ; in winter the appearance is 

 somewhat desolate because the leaves are gone and one in- 

 stinctively thinks of a leafless conifer as a dead tree. 



The Tamarack and the Black Spruce go side by side tow- 

 ard the North Pole ; but at the ultimate boundary, at the very 



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