The rain held off enough so that I could take a brief... very brief... exploration of my daughter's woodland—it's also in our town—and as I was searching the rain-dappled trees in search of... well, anything moving... I noticed that their Larch grove was hosting larch cones. Larix laricina, which is also called the Tamarack, a French Canadian term that, according to most etymologists, is "probably of Algonquian origin," is an oddball among our native conifers. Unlike all other locals, it drops its needles every fall and is thus a deciduous evergreen, which is something of a misnomer, since, in the winter, the Larch is actually an ever-brown, or, throughout its life cycle, a semi-evergreen. By whatever name, it's a beautiful tree, with soft green needles and compact cones that offer fine cups for rain droplets.