Tamaracks

          If you've walked across the bridge connecting the sides of Light and Dark, you've seen the huge tamarack across the stream from the diner.  If you've seen me making this walk, you've probably seen me stop and look at the tree for a minute before continuing on my way, or seen me mention the tree to a friend (for the fifth time) and receive protests in response.  In the warm months it looks like many other conifers with its bright green, short needles.  However, now that fall has come and almost gone, the tree's needles have already changed from green to orange-brown, and fallen, leaving the naked tree to withstand the winter cold.  
          The Tamarack (Larix laricina), also known as the Larch, is a rare conifer tree that sheds its needles deciduously.  It grows abundantly in the Adirondacks and loves the wetlands of the park.  Its needles grow in bunches of ten to twenty and form short spirals around the twigs.  Tamaracks can grow to 75 feet tall and average 40 feet tall at full height, though many that grow in peatlands will never reach past 6 feet.

A tamarack tree growing in a bog at Paul Smith's College

          Tamaracks have a huge range across North America, ranging from Newfoundland and Labrador in the east to Alaska in the west, and northern lower-48 states in the south like New York, Maine, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.  It loves cold and wet conditions, like bogs, swamps, lakes, ponds, and streams, especially of boreal forests.  Hamilton's campus is lucky to have tamaracks growing here, as tamaracks rarely grow on upland sites without an abundance of water.  They love nutrient-poor acidic peatlands and are often the first trees to inhabit land after the land has encountered fires.  Even though they are so tolerant of more extreme conditions, they are intolerant to heat, shade, and pollution.  Because Black Spruce prefer similar climates, they are often found nearby one another.
         Tamaracks are used by humans for their wood, bark, and needles.  They are harvested for pulpwood and their wood can make good posts and timbers.  In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, Longfellow writes of native Americans using tamaracks as material for their canoes: "Give me your roots, O Tamarack!  Of your fibrous roots, O Larch Tree!  My canoes to bind together; that the water may not enter."  The bark has some tannin that can be used for tanning leather.  The needles and roots can be made into a tea.  The Algonquin, along with other native American tribes, used the bark and roots to cure coughs, as well as the needles and inner bark to treat burns and infections.  John Josselyn, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's naturalist, said of the tamarack: "the turpentine that issueth from the tamarack is singularly good to heal wounds and draw out the malice... of any Ach rubbing the place therewith."

Tamaracks near the shore of Wolf Pond

            The secret of the popularity of the tree among non-naturalists lies in its fall color.  Only after most other trees have already lost their leaves does the tamarack's needles begin to change, giving forests a second wave of vibrant fall colors.


http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/20/travel/after-the-maples-the-golden-tamarack.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.adirondackvic.org/Trees-of-the-Adirondacks-Tamarack-Larix-laricina.html
http://wildadirondacks.org/adirondack-plants.html
http://www.lakeplacidnews.com/page/content.detail/id/522270/Unlocking-the-mysterious-tamarack.html?nav=5059