CHAPTER Vni 



The Bald Cypress 



Lumberman spare the forest — the glory of days long past, the primeval home 

 of the race. 



There are a considerable number of plants and animals that well 

 deserve to be called Hving fossils because their living representatives 

 are the last of a very long line that flourished over milHons of 

 years of earth history during which they were more abundant and 

 varied than they are today. The cycads are such living fossils 

 their ancestry going back to the far off days of the Coal Measures, 

 as does also the ginkgo or maidenhair tree of our parks, the latter, 

 a once cosmopolitan type, now existing as a single species whose 

 native home is eastern Asia. 



It may almost be considered axiomatic in tree studies that when 

 a particular type is represented in the modem flora by a very few 

 species of restricted and disconnected range, like the magnolia, 

 tulip-tree or sassafras, and many others might be mentioned, such a 

 type will be found to have had a long and most interesting geologic 

 history, and we can often make such a prediction of a tree species 

 even if we have not been fortunate enough to discover the fossil 

 reHcs of its ancestral forms. 



The bald cypress is a striking illustration of this principle. Its 

 botanical name, Taxodium, was bestowed in the first instance 

 because of its resemblance to the old world yew (Taxus),^ although 

 the former is a much more imposing and graceful tree and alto- 

 gether lacks the funerial aspect of the yew. It is a close relative 

 of the sequoia and the cypress and sequoia have come down the 

 ages, very often in intimate association. 



The bald cypress of today is a large tree with a tall columnar 

 tapering trunk and a pyramidal form which becomes round crowned 



^ The genus Taxus is not confined to the Old World, but the species familiar 

 to Anglo Saxons whose foliage the cypress was considered to resemble is. 



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