214 TREES OF MINNESOTA. 
Larix laricina. (4. americana.) Tamarack. American 
Larch. Hackmatack. 
Leaves one-half to three-quarters of an inch long, slender 
and thread-like, light bluish green, deciduous. Cones one-half 
to one inch long, ovoid. .A slender, graceful tree, thirty to one 
hundred feet high, with close or at length sightly scaly bark. 
Distribution.—-Northeastern United States, north of Pennsyl- 
vania, nearly or quite to the Arctic regions and west nearly to 
Central Minnesota; rare farther south than Ramsey and Henne- 
pin counties in Minnesota. It covers vast areas of swamp land 
in the northern part of this state with a short stunted growth. 
It fails to reach large size in very wet land, while on land that 
is not excessively wet it grows 100 feet high and sixteen inches 
through at the stump. In one instance a stunted Tamarack, 
growing on excessively wet land, had been forty-eight years in 
attaining a diameter of one and one-tenth inches, while on land 
well adapted to it a tree had grown to the height of forty-four 
and one-quarter feet, with a diameter of eleven inches in thirty- 
eight years. 
Propertics of Wood.—Heavy, hard, strong, rather coarse 
grained, compact, durable in contact with the soil; color light 
brown; sapwood nearly white. Specific gravity, 0.6236; weight 
ofa cubic foot, 38.86 pounds. 
Uses.—The Tamarack may occasionally be used for variety in 
lawn planting on moist soil, and is well adapted to planting along 
lake shores and around sloughs; but on dry soil it is of little 
value, and we have many far more valuable trees for moist soils. 
The lumber is largely used in ship building, canoe making, for 
fence posts, telegraph poles, railway ties, etc. The inner bark 
of European Larch is used in medicine, and it is probable that 
the bark of our American species has similar medicinal proper- 
ties. Two varieties varying in color of heartwood, the red and 
the white Tamarack, are commonly distinguished. The differ- 
ence is probably one of age only. The red hearted trees, having 
the more heartwood, make the more durable lumber. This tree 
grows fast, and readily renews itself from seed. For these rea- 
sons, good Tamarack swamps, properly managed, should prove 
profitable investments. 
