Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
This is one of a number of Geocaches along the Javelin Rd., the
first off road of any length that was available in the early days.
Try it in the summer as the flies need food too. Large Vitamin
Bottle.
Tamarack, a popular tree in Labrador, is a slender, pyramidal tree,
50 to 60 feet high, with feeble horizontal branches, becoming
pendulous. Bark thin, broken into reddish scales. Wood heavy, hard,
light brown, strong, coarse grained, resinous, durable in wet soil.
Buds small, globular, red, shining. Leaves soft, deciduous,
fascicled on side spurs, scattered on terminal shoots ; linear,
triangular, 1/4 to 1 inch long ; autumn color, yellow. Flowers:
monoecious, sessile, borne on short branchlets ; pistillate rosy,
ovate, with conspicuous finger-like points on bracts ; staminate
yellow, squat. Fruit small cones with concave, plain scales,
bearing winged seeds ; annual. Preferred habitat, cold swamps and
northern slopes of mountains. Distribution, Newfoundland and Hudson
Bay west across the Rocky Mountains ; south into Minnesota,
Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Uses: Posts, telegraph poles,
railroad ties and ships' timbers. The tamarack loves the Northern
mountain slopes and the cold swamps of Labrador and Canada and our
Northern States. It is the bravest of all the conifers, standing
erect, a pitiful minia-ture of its true self, on the very edge of
the Arctic tundras, a line that no tree dares overstep. Its
companions, the black spruce, Balm of Gilead and an Arctic willow,
are prostrate at its feet. In American lawns trees 6o feet high are
often seen. But compared with the European tree this one is not a
horticultural success. The mark of its life struggle with adversity
is on the species. Even seedlings coddled in nursery rows have
sparse crowns of unsymmetrical growth. In rich soil and among
luxuriant oaks and pines and thick-leaved maples the tamarack looks
ragged and forlorn. It is homesick for the cold, wet soil and the
bleak wind and the valiant company of its kinsmen. It is an
artistic and an ethical mistake to set one of these trees by
itself. Plantations of it are justifiable. Mountain bogs too deep
to measure are covered with tamarack. The fibrous roots were the
Indian's thread ; tough and fine as a shoemaker's "waxed end," it
sewed the canoe of birch, making a seam that scarcely needed the
wax of the balsam to make it water tight. Hiawatha sang : "Give me
of your roots, O Tamarack ! Of your fibrous roots, O Larch Tree !
My canoe to bind together So to bind the ends together That the
water may not enter That the water may not wet me." The flowers of
the tamarack are not conspicuous, but they repay the one who looks
for them. The yellow staminate clusters, like little powdery knobs,
soon fall, but the pistillate ones, conical, with green bracts
alternating with rosy scales, are beautiful along the twig against
the lettuce green of the opening foliage clusters. Erect and with
scales spread, they catch the living pollen ; then close their
scales and "hang their heads " throughout the summer. Under the
rosy scales the seeds are growing. In autumn they wake up, turn
themselves about (which seems quite unnecessary), and sitting quite
erect on the twigs, part their brown scales, daring the wind to
capture and carry off the winged seeds. There is plenty of time,
for the ripe cones remain where they are until the second year. The
wood of the Tamarack is ideal for outdoor furniture products. It
has proven to be stronger and less brittle than cedar, it has a
better defined grain than teak, and it is more resistant to decay
than pine. These attributes are further enhanced through kiln
drying process. Kiln drying lowers a wood's moisture content,
giving extra protection against rotting, warping, and insects.
Locally as an indoor wood the furniture in the Wabush Council
chambers is made from Tamarack. That said Tamarack has
traditionally been used for ship building. Today, Tamarack is
commonly used for railroad ties, posts, poles, and mine timbers.
Tamarack is a preferred wood for use in North America's most
grueling environmental conditions.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)