November 7, 2010 - Window Trees
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

The Algonquian people called this tree tamarack. They used its tough, flexible wood for making snowshoes. Native peoples in Alaska constructed dogsled runners, boat ribs and fish traps from young tamarack. The tree is also known as “hackmatack,” or more commonly, larch. Today larch is used mostly for pulpwood but it has one very unique product: the transparent windows in envelopes. We usually think of cone-bearing trees like tamarack, pines, spruces and firs as being evergreen, but tamarack is an exception. From late fall through the winter months when other conifers sport green needles, tamarack trees are bare. Every autumn, their needles turn to gold, then brown, before falling from the trees. With one of the largest ranges of any conifer, every autumn tamarack adds a golden glow across northern forests as the needles turn color before falling.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.