Leaves linear, triangular, rounded above, prominently keeled on the lower surface, ¾′—1¼′ long, bright green, conspicuously stomatiferous when they first appear; turning yellow and falling in September or October. Flowers: male subglobose and sessile; female oblong, with light-colored bracts produced into elongated green tips, and nearly orbicular rose-red scales. Fruit on stout incurved stems, subglobose, rather obtuse, ½′—¾′ long, composed of about 20 scales slightly erose on their nearly entire margins, rather longer than broad and twice as long as their bracts, bright chestnut-brown at maturity; usually falling during their second year; seeds ⅛′ long, about one third as long as their light chestnut-brown wings broadest near the middle and obliquely rounded at apex. A tree, 50°—60° high, with a trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, small horizontal branches forming during the early life of the tree a narrow regular pyramidal head always characteristic of this tree when crowded in the forest, or with abundant space sweeping out in graceful curves, often becoming contorted and pendulous and forming a broad open frequently picturesque head, and slender leading branchlets often covered at first with a glaucous bloom, becoming light orange-brown during their first winter and conspicuous from the small globose dark red lustrous buds. Bark ½′—¾′ thick, separating into thin closely appressed rather bright reddish brown scales. Wood heavy, hard, very strong, rather coarse-grained, very durable, light brown; largely used for the upper knees of small vessels, fence-posts, telegraph-poles, and railway-ties. Distribution. At the north often on well-drained uplands, southward in cold deep swamps which it often clothes with forests of closely crowded trees, from Labrador to the Arctic Circle, ranging west of the Rocky Mountains to latitude 65° 35′ north, and southward through Canada and the northern states to northern and eastern Pennsylvania, Garrett County, Maryland (Oakland to Thayerville), and Preston County, West Virginia (Cranesville Swamp), northern Indiana and Illinois, and northeastern Minnesota; along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains to about latitude 53° and between the Yukon River and Cook Inlet, Alaska (_Larix alaskensis_ Wight.); very abundant in the interior of Labrador, where it is the largest tree; common along the margins of the barren lands stretching beyond the sub-Arctic forest to the shores of the Arctic Sea; attaining its largest size north of Lake Winnipeg on low benches which it occasionally covers with open forests; on the eastern slopes of the northern Rocky Mountains usually at elevation from 600°—1700° above the sea; rare and local toward the southern limits of its range. Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree in the northeastern states, growing rapidly and attaining in cultivation a large size and picturesque habit. 2. Larix occidentalis Nutt. Tamarack. [Illustration: Fig. 37]