Tamarack is a familiar tree in parks, and it grows farther south than its natural range extends. It is not as desirable a park tree as hemlock, spruce, fir, the cedars, and some of the pines, because its foliage is thin in summer and wanting in winter. It is in a class with cypress. In the early spring, however, while its soft green needles are beginning to show themselves in clusters along the twigs, its delicate and unusual appearance attracts more attention than its companion trees which are always in full leaf and for that reason are somewhat monotonous. [Illustration] WESTERN LARCH [Illustration: WESTERN LARCH] WESTERN LARCH (_Larix Occidentalis_) This is a magnificent tree of the Northwest, and its range lies principally on the upper tributaries of the Columbia river, in Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, but it occurs also among the Blue Mountains of Washington and Oregon. It is the largest member of the larch genus, either in the old world or the new. The finest trees are 250 feet high with diameters of six or eight feet, but sizes half of that are nearer the average. The trunk is of splendid form. In early life it is limby, but later it prunes itself, and a long, tapering bole is developed with a very small crown of thin foliage. No other tree of its size, with the possible exception of old sequoias, has so little foliage in proportion to the trunk. The result is apparent in the rate of growth after the larch has passed its youth. Sometimes such a tree does not increase its trunk diameter as much in seventy-five years as a vigorous loblolly pine or willow oak will in one year. The trunk of a tree, as is well known, grows by means of food manufactured by the leaves and sent down to be transformed into wood. With so few leaves and a trunk so large, the slowness of growth is a natural consequence. Though the annual rings are usually quite narrow, the bands of summerwood are relatively broad. That accounts for the density of larchwood and its great weight. It is six per cent heavier than longleaf pine, and is not much inferior in strength and elasticity. The leaves are from one to one and three-quarter inches long, the cones from one to one and a half inches, and the seeds nearly one-quarter inch in length. They are equipped with wings of sufficient power to carry them a short distance from the parent tree. The bark on young larches is thin, but on large trunks, and near the ground, it may be five or six inches thick. When a notch is cut in the trunk it collects a resin of sweetish taste which the Indians use as an article of food.