PINE FAMILY 
about a central axis ; anthers subglobodse, 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 
along 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 that the rushes disappear 
from the margin and a coating of soil covers it ; the Tamarack 
creeps down and takes possession and the result 1s 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, long, tough, stringy are 
‘hose 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 vamp 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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