Handbook of Teees of the Northern States and Canada. 21 



The Tamarack is a beautiful tree not often 

 over 00 ft. in height nor with trunk more than 

 2 ft. in thickness. Its trunk is usually 

 straight and columnar or slightly tapering, 

 with scaly bark showing little tendency to 

 become ridged and its top is usually of narrow 

 pyramidal form with short horizontal branches 

 and open airy foliage. It is distinctively a 

 tree of swampy lands, venturing farther out 

 on low lake shores and quaking sphagnum 

 bogs than any other tree excepting sometimes 

 the Swamp Spruce and these regions it char- 

 acterizes in summer with its pale green foliage 

 or lights up in autumn with its covering of 

 bright yellow. To the northward in its range 

 where it is very abundant, it is found also on 

 well drained uplands forming in places ex- 

 tensive tracts of open forest. With the Black 

 Spruce it forms the vanguard of the forests 

 in the subarctic regions and there maintains 

 tree-form battling with the elements while its 

 companion is prone upon the ground but still 

 engaged in the struggle. 



The wood, of which a cubic foot when dry 

 weighs 38.86 lbs., is rather hard, hea\x strong 

 and very durqble in contact with the soil. It 

 is of a- light orange-brown color with thin 

 lighter sap-wood and is valued for railway 

 ties, posts, planks and lumber for interior 

 iinishing.2 



Leaves very slender, numerous, in fascicles on 

 short lateral spurs, or singly on new shoots, %- 

 IVi in. long, linear, triangular, pale green, turning 

 yellow and falling in autumn. Floipers appear 

 with the leaves : staminate yellow, subglobos" 

 from leafless scaly buds : pistillate oblong with 

 rose-red rounded scales, on lateral mostly leafv 

 spurs. Conex oblong, about 1/2 in. long oil short 

 peduncles and composed ot about 12 thin concave 

 suborhicular persistent scales about twice as long 

 as their bracts : seeds about % in. long, with light 

 brown wing broadest at about the middle.' 



1. Syn. L. laracina (DuRoi) Koch. 



2. A. W., I, 2.3. 



.'1. For genus see p. 420. 



