Leaves triangular, rounded on the back, conspicuously keeled below, rigid, sharp-pointed, 1′—1¾′ long, about 1/32′ wide, light pale green, turning pale yellow early in the autumn. Flowers: male short-oblong; female oblong, nearly sessile, with orbicular scales and bracts produced into elongated tips. Fruit oblong, short-stalked, 1′—1½′ long, with numerous thin stiff scales nearly entire and sometimes a little reflexed on their margins, much shorter than their bracts, more or less thickly coated on the lower surface below the middle with hoary tomentum, and standing after the escape of the seeds at right angles to the axis of the cone, or often becoming reflexed; seeds nearly ¼′ long, with a pale brown shell, one half to two thirds as long as the thin fragile pale wings broadest near the middle and obliquely rounded at apex. A tree, sometimes 180° high, with a tall tapering naked trunk 6°—8° in diameter, or on dry soil and exposed mountain slopes usually not more than 100° tall, with a short narrow pyramidal head of small branches clothed with scanty foliage, or occasionally with a larger crown of elongated drooping branches, stout branchlets covered when they first appear with soft pale pubescence, usually soon glabrous, bright orange-brown in their first year, ultimately becoming dark gray-brown, and dark chestnut-brown winter-buds about ⅛′ in diameter. Bark of young stems thin, dark-colored and scaly, becoming near the base of old trunks 5′ or 6′ thick and broken into irregularly shaped oblong plates often 2° long and covered with thin closely appressed light cinnamon-red scales. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard and strong, close-grained, very durable in contact with the soil, bright light red, with thin nearly white sapwood; largely used for railway-ties and fence-posts, and manufactured into lumber used in cabinet-making and the interior finish of buildings. Distribution. Moist bottom-lands and on high benches and dry mountain sides generally at elevations between 2000° and 7000° above sea-level, usually singly or in small groves, through the basin of the upper Columbia River from southern British Columbia to the western slopes of the continental divide of northern Montana, and to the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains of Washington and northern Oregon; most abundant and of its largest size on the bottom-lands of streams flowing into Flat Head Lake in northern Montana, and in northern Idaho. Occasionally planted in the eastern states and in Europe, but in cultivation showing little promise of attaining a large size or becoming a valuable ornamental or timber-tree. 3. Larix Lyallii Parl. Tamarack. [Illustration: Fig. 38]