The Evergreen That Wasn’t
The Great Outdoors | November 1, 2017
By Jackie Scharfenberg, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
A big city girl named Emma spent the summer in the Northwoods. She admired the 40-to-80-foot tall pyramid shaped evergreens (conifers) growing in the swamps, bogs, and around the edges of the lakes.
When she examined the trees closely, she noticed the soft, slender three-angled needles growing in crowded clusters of ten to twenty needles. Each cluster grew from a spur-like twig and spiraled around the branch. Emma felt the rough bark with its thin reddish-brown scales. In very early summer on older branches, she had admired the small (less than one inch) red rose-shaped cones that later turned light brown. On the younger branches, Emma found yellow cones; the male pollen flowers.
In many spots the trees grew in stands by themselves in the bright sunlight. In other areas, they grew taller than their neighboring trees of black spruce, northern white cedar, black ash, red maple, and balsam fir. It seemed to Emma that they loved the sun.
She enjoyed walking through the woods listening for white-throated sparrows, or ruffed grouse, and searching for red squirrels. Sometimes, she found where deer and snowshoe hares had browsed on the trees, or a porcupine gnawed at the inner bark.
To remember her awesome Northwoods summer, Emma dug up one of these special trees to plant in her city yard. Once planted, she had her family and many friends come to admire her beautiful evergreen. It took root well, but when late October came, the needles all turned yellow and fell off the tree. This broke Emma’s heart, because she thought her tree had died. Every time Emma caught a glimpse of her dead tree, she felt so sad. After a long winter, spring finally arrived. Emma noticed that her evergreen had bright green needles again. This made her jump for joy!
One day, her aunt, the naturalist, came to visit. Excitedly, Emma took her aunt out to the tree and shared the whole story. With a chuckle, her aunt explained that the tree is a tamarack (Larix laricina), an evergreen that is not ‘ever green because it loses its needles in the autumn in the same way a maple tree drops its leaves. She told Emma how tamaracks grow in wetlands from the tundra near the North Pole south to extreme northern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio and over east to the Atlantic Coast. Her aunt told her how tamaracks can survive very cold temperatures (at least -85o F) making the tamarack one of the most northern growing trees.
She explained that the tough, heavy, durable, rot-resistant wood is used for posts, poles, railroad ties, and pulpwood. Native Americans used thin strips of the flexible wood for making snowshoes and skinny roots to sew together birch bark items, including canoes. Years ago, colonists used roots bent at right angles as “knees” to join the ribs to the deck timbers on small ships.
After learning all the cool things about tamaracks, Emma took extra good care of her Northwoods friend, which grew into a beautiful big tree!
Photo by Tim & Selena Middleton
