eastern larch / tamarack (Larix laricina)
Pinaceae, the pine family
How to recognize eastern larch. In many respects Larix is a typical member of the pine family, with its needle-like leaves and woody cones.
![Larix laricina branch Larix laricina branch](https://ohioplants.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Larix-laricina-branch.jpg)
Larch is a deciduous conifer with delicate leaves in fascicles.
However it stands apart immediately by the slenderness of its needles, their arrangement in many-leaved bundles, and the fact that the trees are deciduous, shedding the leaves in autumn. Below, see a larch photographed in a fen in northeast Ohio’s Summit County in a recent early November, with just a few leaves still hanging on. Note that the small cones are upright (erect), an unusual feature in the Pinaceae.
![](https://dendro.ohioplants.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/larch-cones-750x563.jpg)
Larch isn’t common in Ohio, which makes this lovely tree even more lovable.
Eastern larch (also called “tamarack”) is principally a far-northern North American species, something of a rarity in Ohio found only in a few kettle-hole bogs and similar saturated acidic or strongly basic (fen) soils in the northeastern and northwestern corners of the state. The photo below was taken in a nature preserve in Summit County, near Kent.
![Larix laricina habitat Larix laricina habitat](https://ohioplants.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Larix-laricina-habitat.jpg)
Larch is found in acid bogs, remnants of post-glacial periods.
Scanned Image from an Old Book
(Flora of West Virginia, by P.D. Strausbaugh and Earl L. Core)
![](https://dendro.ohioplants.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/larch-core.jpg)
eastern larch