CONIFER. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 153 
Taxodium distichum inhabits river-swamps, usually submerged during several months of the year, 
the low saturated banks of streams, and the wet depressions of Pine barrens. It is distributed from 
southern Delaware, where it grows on the banks of the Nanticoke River near Seaford, and covers the 
great swamp of Sussex County at the head of the Pocamoke River, where trees of almost the largest size 
stood until a few years ago, southward near the coast to the shores of Mosquito Inlet and Cape Romano, 
Florida, through the coast region of the Gulf states to the valley of the Devil River in Texas,’ and 
through Louisiana and Arkansas to southeastern Missouri, eastern Mississippi and Tennessee, western 
and northwestern Kentucky, southern Illinois, and Knox County in southwestern Indiana. In the south 
Atlantic and Gulf ‘states, where it attains its largest size, Taxodiwm distichum often covers with nearly 
pure forests great areas of river-swamps, from which the water rarely disappears ;? in drier situations it 
grows with the Red Maple, the Water Ash, the Liquidamber, and the Bay, and in the Mississippi valley 
its common associates are the Swamp Poplar and the Water Locust. 
The wood of Taxodium distichum is light and soft, close, straight-grained, not strong, easily 
worked, and very durable in contact with the soil. It is light or dark brown, sometimes nearly black, 
with thin nearly white sapwood, and contains broad conspicuous resinous bands of small summer-cells 
The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4543, 
It is largely used in construction and cooperage and for railway- 
ties, posts, and fences, and is one of the most valuable woods produced by the forests of North America. 
Most of the wooden houses in Louisiana and the other Gulf states are made from the wood of this tree, 
and it is now sent in large quantities to the northern states, where it is used principally in the 
and numerous very obscure medullary rays. 
a cubic foot weighing 28.31 pounds. 
manufacture of doors, sashes, balustrades, and the rafters of glass houses.’ 
From the trunks of the 
Bald Cypress the Indians of the lower Mississippi valley formerly hollowed their canoes.’ 
The resin which can be obtained from the stems and from the cones is said to possess balsamic and 
healing properties.” 
William Strachey, who visited the English colony on the James River in 1610, probably wrote the 
first account of the Bald Cypress,° and it was first described by Parkinson’ in 1640 from a plant 
2481, f. 2336, 2337) as Cupressus disticha, var. nutans, although I 
have no means of determining the fact. 
1 Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 555 (Man. Bot. W. Texas). 
2 In the great river-swamps of the Gulf coast, where the Bald 
Cypress grows to its greatest size, the water is so deep through 
nearly the whole year that its seeds cannot germinate, and there 
are no young trees and comparatively few small ones growing up 
to replace the old ones, which are being fast converted into lumber. 
Some of the large inhabitants of these swamps must have attained 
a great age, for the Bald Cypress, after its early years, grows 
slowly. (See Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. iii. 96.) The log specimen in 
the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American 
Museum of Natural History, New York, is seventeen and three 
quarters inches in diameter inside the bark, and shows two hundred 
and thirty-four layers of annual growth, having increased only five 
and one half inches in diameter during the last one hundred and 
thirty-four years of its life. When these old swamp trees began 
their career the seeds from which they sprung must have fallen on 
ground warmed by the sun, and the present depth of the water 
beneath them can be explained only by the hypothesis that the 
whole Gulf coast of the United States is gradually sinking. 
The depth of water in these southern swamps prevents natural 
reproduction, and facilitates the operation of the lumber-getter, 
who would otherwise be unable to drag the heavy logs through the 
swamp mud. As the trees when cut alive sink to the bottom of 
the water and are lost, it is necessary to kill them standing by 
girdling them the year before the negro wood-choppers, balancing 
themselves in frail canoes, cut through the stems above their 
This work must be done 
in winter when the water is high so that the trunks may be towed 
through the swamps into the rivers to reach the mills. 
8 Two varieties of Cypress wood, the black and the white, are 
recognized by lumbermen. 
swollen bases, and trim off the branches. 
The former, which is rather harder 
than the other and is considered more durable, appears to be pro- 
duced near the base of large trees. But no differences in the habit 
or in the external aspect of the trees indicate a difference in the 
color of their wood ; and this seems to be due either to the age at 
which the tree is cut or to unknown individual causes. 
# “On en fait communément des Pirogues d’un seul trone d’un 
pouce & plus d’épaisseur, qui portent des trois & quatre milliers, il 
s’en fait encore de plus grosses: il y a un de ces arbres au Baton 
Rouge, qui a douze brasses de tour & une hauteur tout-d-fait 
(Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane, ii. 31.) 
5 Charlevoix, Histoire dela Nouvelle France, ed. 12™. iv. 300, t. — 
Porcher, Resources of Southern Fields and Forests, 508. 
6 « There is a kynd of wood which we call cypres, because both 
the wood, the fruict, and leafe, did most resemble yt ; and of these 
trees there are some neere three fathome about at the root very 
streight, and fifty, sixty, or eighty foote without a braunch.” 
(William Strachey, Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, ed. 
Major, 129.) 
7 Cupressus Americana, Parkinson, Theatr. 1477, £.— Catesby, 
Nat. Hist. Car. i. 11, t. 
Cupressus Virginiana, foliis Acacie deciduis, Hermann, Cat. Hort. 
Lugd. Bat. 207. — J. Commelin, Hort. Amst. i. 113, t. 59.— Boer- 
haave, Ind. Alt. Hort. Lugd. Bat. ii. 181. 
extraordinaire.” 
