The Cypresses 



of unfamiliar flowers. The rainy season which opens in May 

 inundates this land for fully half of the year. 



The wood of bald cypress is very important in the lumber 

 trade, being soft, handsome, er.sily worked and durable in water 

 and in the soil. Buckets and bowls are made by hollowing out 

 knees of suitable sizes. 



Lover though it be of Southern swamps, yet there is no hand- 

 somer spire of living green in any Northern upland park than this 

 same bald cypress. In its early years the tree is perfectly sym- 

 metrical, trim and beautiful in the feathery lightness of its leafy 

 spray. The roots keep out of sight and there is no hint of the out- 

 landish hollow buttresses and bare knees that characterise the 

 tree at home. Among strangers, the bald cypress puts on its best 

 manners; there is no more conventional and fastidious tree in the 

 park. The tree is cultivated also in a number of varieties, some 

 dwarfs, some weeping forms, others of stricter spire forms that 

 lend themselves to formal effects in gardens. The heads of cypress 

 trees grow broad in moist soil, and assume narrower form in soil 

 with scant moisture supply. 



103 



