Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several deciduous, coniferous trees of the genus Larix of North America and Eurasia, having clusters of needlelike leaves and heavy, durable wood.
  • noun The wood of any of these trees.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A commercial name for the lumber of the noble fir, Abies nobilis. See noble fir.
  • noun Any coniferous tree of the genus Larix.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A genus of coniferous trees, having deciduous leaves, in fascicles (see Illust. of fascicle).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun countable A coniferous tree, of genus Larix, having deciduous leaves, in fascicles.
  • noun uncountable The wood of the larch.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun wood of a larch tree
  • noun any of numerous conifers of the genus Larix all having deciduous needlelike leaves

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[German Lärche, from Middle High German larche, from Latin larix, laric-.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin larix.

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Examples

  • Our deciduous evergreens tamaracks, also called larch and hackmatack are filling in with fresh bright needles, some white water-flower was blooming spikes out in the bog, and white lady-slipper orchids bloomed right at the edge of the road.

    Tuesday no-roadkill report jhetley 2007

  • A gum called larch-tree sulphur, chewed by both natives and settlers, is also obtained from these forests.

    Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania Jewett Castello Gilson

  • My larch is a weeping variety that has been trained to grow in an upward spiral.

    TimesArgus.com: Sports 2008

  • A piece of dry wood, as much as a cubit, stands over the ground, either of oak or of larch, which is not rotted by rain; and two white stones are placed on either side, in the narrow part of the way; [747] but the racecourse around is level: either it is the monument [748] of some man long since dead, or perhaps it has been a goal in the time of former men, and now swift-footed noble Achilles has appointed it the goal.

    The Iliad of Homer (1873) 750? BC-650? BC Homer 1840

  • Some rare poppies and buttercups have also been found in addition to small amounts of arboreal material such as larch needles, willows, and tree bark.

    Phil Jones and the Dutiful Comrades « Climate Audit 2007

  • I agree that it is primarily Engelman spruce sites that have not been archived and I've accordingly changed "larch" to "Engelman spruce" in the post.

    Woodhouse's Temperature Proxies!!! « Climate Audit 2007

  • Personlly, I'd buy the tamarack definition: the words are fairly similar, and the further north you go into NH and Maine, the more you hear "larch" called "tamarack".

    languagehat.com: HACKMATACK. 2005

  • When a man set out to build a tannery, he used to go into the woods where he could be sure of enough oak trees to supply him for many years with the bark from which tannin is made; but it has been found that the bark of several other kinds of trees, such as larch, chestnut, spruce, pine, and hemlock, will tan as well as that of oak.

    Makers of Many Things Eva March Tappan 1892

  • Around four hectares of invasive rhododendron is being eradicated and one hectare of other non-native species such as larch is being thinned out.

    Kos RSS Feed 2010

  • Today, by comparison, they are increasingly a blend of native broadleaf species, such as larch, oak, willow and ash, with neat rows of Douglas firs and Sitka spruces.

    The Guardian World News 2010

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