Nyssa 



513 



Identification. (See under Nyssa sylvatica) 



In winter, specimens from the tree at White Knights showed the following 

 characters : Twigs stout, pubescent near the tip, glabrescent elsewhere. Leaf-scars 

 slightly oblique on prominent pulvini, almost orbicular or obcordate, notched in the 

 upper margin, surrounded by a slightly raised rim, and marked by three conspicuous 

 bundle-dots. Lateral buds minute, globose, two-scaled, reddish, shining, glabrous, 

 arising in the notch of the leaf-scar. Terminal buds neariy globose, short and broad, 

 with four to five thick, pubescent, reddish scales, keeled on the back and apiculate at 

 the apex ; in December the three outermost scales had dropped the apiculus and 

 showed a truncate apex with a terminal scar. The base of the shoot is marked by 

 ring-like scars as in Nyssa sylvatica. 



Distribution 



Nyssa aquatica is found growing in swamps throughout the coast region of the 

 United States, from Southern Virginia to Texas, and in the Mississippi valley, in 

 Arkansas, Southern and South-Eastern Missouri, Western Kentucky, and Tennessee, 

 and in the valley of the lower Wabash River in Illinois. 



An interesting account of the peculiar habit of this tree, as observed in the 

 swamps of Arkansas, is given by Coulter.^ Occurring in company with Taxodium 

 distichum, wherever the ground is inundated with water, the trunk develops an 

 enlarged, dome-like base, often of immense size. A tree only 45 feet high, of which 

 a figure is given, had a swollen base 55 feet in girth at the point where the roots 

 entered the ground. When the water-supply is scanty the base is only slightly 

 enlarged ; and trees growing in dry soil show no swelling of the trunk. Coulter 

 saw numerous seedlings of Nyssa, and concludes that it is gradually ousting from 

 the swamps the Deciduous Cypress, which rarely seeds itself Wilson ^ states that 

 around the swollen base of these trees in the swamps there are masses of roots 

 extending 6 to 8 inches above high-water line, each root going vertically up out of 

 the water, and after a sharp bend going down into the water again. He compares 

 these roots, rising above the water for purposes of aeration, with the knees of 

 Taxodium. 



Cultivation 



Nyssa aquatica was cultivated' by Collinson near London in 1735. It is now 

 scarcely known in cultivation in England, the only tree which we have found being 

 one at White Knights Park, Reading, the residence of T. Friedlander, Esq. It 

 is a slender tree, about 36 feet by 2 feet 2 inches, which looks of considerable age 

 and is not vigorous in growth. Loudon ^ states that most of the trees which he saw 

 at White Knights in 1833 were planted between 1790 and 1810; and one was a fine 

 specimen of Nyssa aquatica, perhaps identical with the tree now living. 



Report Missouri Bot. Garden, 1904, xv. 56, plates l8, 19. ^ /y^<-. Philadelphia Acad. Nat. Sc. 1889, p. 69. 



3 Aiton, Hort. Kew, iii. 446 {1789). * Gardeners' Magazine, ix. 664 (1833). 



* This tree is not referred to by Loudon in his large work, published in 1838. 



