THE BALD CYPRESS 57 



in old age. Botanists generally recognize three species — our 

 common bald cypress which ranges from the Coastal Plain of 

 southern Delaware and Maryland to the tip of the Florida penin- 

 sula, and westward along the Gulf Coastal Plain to Texas, extend- 

 ing up the Mississippi and its tributary bottoms to those of the 

 lower Wabash River. Concerning its appearance I can do no 

 better than quote the quaint remarks of William Bartram, the 

 pre-Revolutionary traveller, who speaks of it as "in the first order 

 of North American trees. Its majestic stature is surprising. On 

 approaching it we are struck with a kind of awe at beholding the 



stateKness of its trunk The delicacy of its color and the 



texture of its leaves exceed everything in vegetation. .... 

 Prodigious buttresses branch from the trunk on every side, each 

 of which terminates underground in a very large, strong, serpentine 

 root, which strikes off and branches every way just under the sur- 

 face of the earth, and from these roots grow woody cones, called 

 cypress knees, 4, 5 and 6 feet high, and from 6 to 18 inches and 2 

 feet in diameter at the base." 



This basally expanded butt, the horizontal root system with 

 the upright pointed knees which project into the air from the shal- 

 low roots when the tree is growing in its natural habitat in wet 

 soil, have served to impart to the tree a weirdness, enhanced by 

 the swampy habitat and often by a shroud of Spanish moss, that 

 would have amply justified a Druidical or similar cult had 

 this part of North America been inhabited by aborigines who had 

 progressed beyond the stone age of culture. There is considerable 

 romance and folk song associated with the bald cypress in our 

 South, particularly in the negro South. 



One of the characteristics of the bald cypress that impresses the 

 observer is its vitality despite the fact that it is the last representa- 

 tive of its race and one whose area of distribution seems to be 

 slowly shrinking. Latrobe noticed this vitahty in the buried trees 

 in his description of the Cape Henry (Virginia) sand dunes in 1799. 

 Similar instances may still be seen in the same region, and the 

 nearby patriarchal cypress group of Lake Drummond in the Dis- 

 mal Swamp tell the same story. The few that remain in the 



