This is a beautiful and fascinating conifer, but you wouldn’t want it for a Christmas tree. In a week or so, it will be nothing but bare, gray branches that are hardly noticeable.
Yes, it’s a native tamarack ((Larix laricina, aka larch or hackmatack). It’s in the pine family and has needles and seed cones, but its needles turn gold when maple leaves do and it sheds those needles when maples drop their leaves. On a windy day in November, flying tamarack needles can look like golden rain.
Unlike those of true pines, the tamarack’s needles grow in soft clusters (“rosettes”). Those needles are soft, but the wood is tough and rot-resistant. Native Americans and early colonists used tamarack wood for snowshoes, boatbuilding and "corduroy" log roads. In fact, “tamarack” and “hackmatack” are derived from our native northeastern peoples’ words for “snowshoe wood.”
Even today, wooden boatbuilders harvest the tamarack’s crooked roots and stumps to carve boat "knees" to reinforce the joints where a boat's deck meets the hull sides. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 4 and 8, 2026.)