58 TREE ANCESTORS 



Lake are survivors from a bygone day when the water level was 

 lower, and although they are for the most part much wasted and 

 reduced to hollow shells, they bravely put forth their leafy twigs 

 each season. I have noticed comparable instances along some of 

 our southern rivers where small C3^ress trees that had been under- 

 mined and carried down stream by floods had been able to partially 

 right themselves in the subsiding waters by means of their heavy 

 expanded butts and which were occupying, apparently not greatly 

 harmed, as involuntary squatters, the narrow shingle of the river 

 sand bar. 



The bald cypress, Taxodimn distichum, in allusion to the distich- 

 ous or two-ranked arrangement of the leaves on the twigs, fre- 

 quently reaches a height of 150 feet, and usually has a trunk 

 diameter of 4 to 5 feet and may reach as much as 12 feet, measured 

 above the expanded buttresses and often hollow base. It is much 

 sought by lumbermen but its swampy habitat protects it to some 

 extent from the wholesale destruction that is visited upon some of 

 our hardwoods. The excellence of cypress wood is proverbial, 

 well meriting its reputation, now much advertised as "the wood 

 eternal." 



Our second native species, not recognized as distinct by many 

 botanists, is the pond cypress, or Taxodimn imhricarium, in allu- 

 sion to the somewhat imbricated, or at least, appressed habit of 

 the leaves. It is a smaller and much less important a tree with 

 less flat and more appressed leaves and enormously expanded butts, 

 and frequents ponds rather than river bottoms — the favorite abode 

 of its more noble relative. 



The third existing species is the Mexican cypress or Taxodium 

 miicronatiim, Taxodium monkzumae or Taxodium mexicanum as 

 it has been christened by different authorities. It does not occur 

 within the limits of the United States, but is now confined to scat- 

 tered localities on the Mexican Plateau, especially toward its 

 southern end. It seems probable that the Mexican cypress is a 

 close relative of our familiar species which, in prehistoric times, 

 perhaps urged by the Pleistocene glaciation of the North country, 

 invaded Central America, the continuity of its range having been 



