The Epitome of Larchness: The American Larch
Passing through a wood of larch trees,
I looked at larch trees, for the first time.
Larch trees made me lonesome.
Traveling made me lonesome.
Hakushū Kitahara ( trans. Hiroaki Sato)
Photo: Lorie Shaull
Passing through a wood of larch trees,
The Japanese have their larches. So do the Siberians and the Mongolians, the dwellers of the Alps and the Himalayas. A traveler can circumnavigate much of the Northern Hemisphere by passing through larch trees, though he will have to walk through the most difficult and coldest terrain to do so.
The range of the American larch or tamarack extends from northern Canada down to the Finger Lakes. The tree’s scientific name is Larix laricinis: literally, “larchlike larch,” the epitome of larchness.
The name of the genus is possibly of Gaulish origin. According to legend, while putting down a rebellion at a stronghold in the Alps, Caesar’s soldiers found that a certain wooden tower was fireproof. The Romans dubbed this marvelous wood larix after Larignum, the name of the settlement. Some larches are indeed resistant to fire, but this story sounds apocryphal.
I looked at larch trees, for the first time.
A larch in winter is bare and looks blighted. Don’t be fooled. It is, most unusually, a deciduous conifer, the only one native to North America, apart from the bald cypress. It dropped all of its needles last autumn in a slow fire of gold; it is now dormant.
Trees must strike a balance between taking in nutrients and protecting themselves from the elements; the more inhospitable the climate, the more carefully the balance must be struck. As a general rule, conifers take the slow and steady approach, producing rigid, waxy, rolled leaves that are relatively inefficient at photosynthesis but tough enough to keep functioning year-round. There are downsides, though: shellacked leaves are an exorbitant expense, from a tree’s perspective, and branches can break if the snow accumulates. Deciduous trees, on the other hand, pour their energy each year into producing big, soft leaves that harvest sunlight efficiently, but that are fragile and dehydrate easily. When the light becomes weak, they jettison them; snow falls right through the bare branches of the dormant tree.
The larch has found a strategy somewhere in the middle. Its needles are only designed to last one season. Lacking an energy-expensive waxy cuticle, they are easy to grow and (once the reusable components are extracted in the autumn) easy to dispose of. Single-use, we might say.
In the spring, soft whisk brooms of asparagus green an inch long will sprout from its branches. These are followed by miniature cones sometimes no bigger than a thumbnail that start out as a glaucous maroon and eventually mature into a lustrous brown. These charming features, which give the tree its characteristically open, airy look, are an evolutionary response to adversity: short needles require less energy to produce, and small cones are less likely to be knocked off by fierce winds.
Larch trees made me lonesome.
If you see an American larch, your feet are probably wet or frozen, and you might be lost. These are the first trees to come creeping into a bog, spiraling their roots down into the peat. They are often found with black spruce and the little plants that eke out a living in the acidic, exposed world of a northern wetland: bog laurel, pitcher plants, tiny orchids.
Traveling made me lonesome.
The larch is a tree of traveling. The Algonquian word for it, “hackmatack,” means “wood for snowshoes.” Native Americans used its root strings to sew birch bark canoes and its resin to seal them. European settlers found that the bog-born tree would not rot underwater and so used its wood for shipbuilding; the curved roots, in particular, made excellent boat ribs. Laid down over muddy tracks, its trunks stitched corduroy roads through the young country.
It even accompanied some on their final journeys. Before the Civil War, town cemeteries were sometimes planted with a single larch. Every winter, it seemed to wither; every spring, it was rejuvenated, just as the dead would be reborn on Resurrection Day.
Editor’s note: Within the Finger Lakes region, mature larch is relatively uncommon and can be found in some wetlands. European larch (Larix decidua) is similar and has also been planted around the region, including within state forests.
