Dad said the hackmatack was a native name for the tamarack (American, or black, larch (Larix laricina)), the roots of which were commonly used to make ships' knees (a piece used to fasten keel to hull, I believe, which had to be very strong).    From Wordnik.com.  [languagehat.com: HACKMATACK.] Reference

Spelling of 'hackmatack' standardised to ensure consistency with other uses.    From Wordnik.com.  [Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses] Reference

Hortus Third lists two distinct specific epithets for "hackmatack": Populus balsamifera, a member of the Salix (willow) family; and Larix laricina, of the Pinaeceae (pine family).    From Wordnik.com.  [languagehat.com: HACKMATACK.] Reference

That said, I can testify as a native speaker of northern Maine-ese that in Piscataquis County in the 1970s, "hackmatack" clearly referred both to the tamarack notable, according to my sixth-grade science teacher, for being the only deciduous needleleaf tree and for a kind of poplar-ish tree that was also popularly known as "popple," technically the quaking aspen.    From Wordnik.com.  [languagehat.com: HACKMATACK.] Reference

Could it be that tacamahac (Populus) and hackmatack (Larix) got confused (the words, not the trees)?.    From Wordnik.com.  [languagehat.com: HACKMATACK.] Reference

A competitive googling produced 755 hits for "hackmatack, larix" and only 342 for "hackmatack, populus," but that's not exactly a scientific way of deciding the matter.    From Wordnik.com.  [languagehat.com: HACKMATACK.] Reference

Common names for P. balsamifera include balsam poplar, hackmatack, and tacamahac; common names for L. laricina include American larch, tamarack, hackmatack, and black larch.    From Wordnik.com.  [languagehat.com: HACKMATACK.] Reference

Now we roll along amidst primeval trees, not the evergreens of the sea-coast, but familiar growths of maple, beech, birch; and larches, juniper or hackmatack -- imperishable for ship craft.    From Wordnik.com.  [Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses] Reference

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.    From Wordnik.com.  [Tuesday no-roadkill report] Reference

Having spent considerable time in New England, I was always aware of those conifers commonly referred to as "larches", and I always thought a hackmatack tree was some sort of larch, hackmatack being a corruption of a Wampanoag or Massachusett word.    From Wordnik.com.  [languagehat.com: HACKMATACK.] Reference

The height of land or plateau which constitutes the interior of the Labrador peninsula is from 2,000 to 2,500 feet above the sea level, fairly heavily wooded with spruce, fir, hackmatack, and birch, and not at all the desolate waste it has been pictured by many writers.    From Wordnik.com.  [Scientific American Supplement No. 822, October 3, 1891] Reference

To this we were hospitably invited also, and were right glad to uncase our limbs of stiff oil-skin and doff our sou'-westers, and sit down before the cheery fire, piled up with spruce logs and hackmatack; comfortable, indeed, was it to be thus snugly housed, while the weather outside was so lowering, and the schooner wet and cold with rain.    From Wordnik.com.  [Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses] Reference

There was no hackmatack tree at the end of his line.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

"Twenty paces to a hackmatack tree, north," read Jamie.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

This bunch I hangs in the only hackmatack tree handy about.    From Wordnik.com.  [Left on the Labrador A Tale of Adventure Down North] Reference

He returned to the little hackmatack tree and again consulted the paper.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

It did not take them long to find the hackmatack tree, and in doing so they stumbled upon the pile of rocks Jamie had built up for a compass rest.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

And the dark hemlock and hackmatack woods were yet darker after the wet season, as they lay, in a hundred wildernesses, in the mighty recesses of the mountains.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Complete Works of Whittier] Reference

He looked directly ahead, but saw no hackmatack within a reasonable extension of his twenty paces to account for the longer strides the original pacer may have taken.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

Much discouraged, he was about to return again to the rock when suddenly his eye fell upon a small and scarcely noticeable hackmatack six paces to the right of his north line and a little beyond him.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

A man sitting under a banyan (or was it a hackmatack?) tree in the park, who said he was a pet vet, told me that all the hurry-scurry was caused by a new law passed by the duly elected rinky-dink city officials, all of whom, he claimed, were certified nitwits, not to say dead-heads.    From Wordnik.com.  [VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol VII No 4] Reference

A hackmatack tree, but to the middle of several spruce trees.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

"Forty paces west to a round rock," he read, observing, "that won't be so hard now as findin 'the hackmatack tree.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

That stumpage on number eight is mostly cedar and hackmatack, and I've got an offer from the folks that want sleepers for the railroad extension. ".    From Wordnik.com.  [The Skipper and the Skipped Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul] Reference

Mr.P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm, etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was expressed at the asking of the question.".    From Wordnik.com.  [Life: Its True Genesis] Reference

Green mounds under a hackmatack.    From Wordnik.com.  [Many Swans: Sun Myth of the North American Indians] Reference

Leaving the land of hackmatack and pine.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Tent on the Beach and Others Part 4, from Volume IV., the Works of Whittier: Personal Poems] Reference

30. hackmatack.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Spelling-Book for Advanced Classes] Reference

hackmatack-roots for knees.    From Wordnik.com.  [Leaves of Grass [1867]] Reference

"'Tis the only hackmatack I sees hereabouts.    From Wordnik.com.  [Troop One of the Labrador] Reference

The live-oak kelsons, the pine-planks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for knees.    From Wordnik.com.  [Poems By Walt Whitman] Reference

As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Confidence-Man] Reference

As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these varieties of mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Confidence-Man] Reference