AMERICAN FORESTRY 



578 



with Spanish moM, 

 arc highly pictur- 

 esque. Trunks of 



mature trees are well 



rounded, and usually 



hollow at the base. 



The ordinary diame- 

 ters are 3 to 5 feet, 



but veterans 12 feet 



through are found. 



The tallest individuals 



rise to a height of 140 



to 150 feet, the aver- 

 age height being 100 



to 120 feet. 



Cypress " knees " 



arouse the curiosity 



of the visitor when he 



first sees them. A 



single tree may be 



surrounded by fifty or 



one hundred of these 



peculiar growths, 



formed only when the 



trees stand in wet 



places. If the water 



is high, the " knees " 



appear as steeple-like 



projections above the 



surface, some having 



a regular cone shape, others fantastically knobbed and 



gnarled. Low water reveals that they spring from the 

 roots of the tree, forming an astonishing system of 

 humps and hollows. Further investigation will show 

 that each knee has its own system of intricately 

 branched roots, reaching down into the muck. In places 

 subject to very high water for part of the year, the 

 knees may be 8 or 10 feet high, but usually they are 

 only from 1 to 4 feet high. Apparently their purpose 

 i> to reach above the water to supply air to the roots, 

 and also to furnish a firm footing for the great weight 

 of the tree in quagmires where engineers would have 

 difficulty in devising a foundation capable of supporting 

 a similar weight. The softer the soil, the larger and 

 more numerous are the knees. They are hollow except 

 very early in their development, and the wood of which 

 <hey are formed is exceedingly twisted in grain and 

 very light in weight. The knees never send up sprouts 

 and they die after the tree is fefled. 



The bark of the trunks may be thin and scaly or 

 thick and deeply furrowed. Apparently, this variation 

 is due to differences in the conditions of soil and moisture 

 under which the trees grow. The color of the surface 

 of the bark varies from light brown to a deep red- 

 dish hue. When the bark is broken it pulls apart into 

 long fibrous strips of an attractive cinnamon shade of 

 reddish brown. 



The graceful light green foliage of bald cypress is 

 especially attractive. The leaves are of two" kinds, and 



GEOGRAPHICAL AND COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION OF CYPRESS IN THE 



UNITED STATES 

 Although seven species commonly known as cypresses grow in the United States, only one. bald 

 cypress (.Taxodium distickum). is of great commercial importance. Taxodium imbncortum, a 

 closely related species, occurs in the same range as bald cypress and is cut and used with it. 

 Cypress is restricted in its natural occurrence to deep, rich swamp-lands, but when planted it 

 thrives in as wide a range of climate and soil as most of our forest trees. Naturally, however. 

 it occurs in commercially important quantities only in regions where logging is difficult and 

 expensive. The introduction of larger and more efficient logging machinery has advanced the 

 logging in any specified region from the water fronts into the deeper and less accessible swamp 

 areas. Thus, the evolution in logging methods chiefly accounts for the continual commercial 

 importance of cypress in regions where lumbering was actively in progress many years ago. 



are borne on tiny 

 branches that are 

 shed with the leaves. 

 In the first type the 

 leaves are thin and 

 soft-textured, a half 

 to three-quarters of 

 an inch long, narrow, 

 flattened and pointed. 

 They stand in two 

 horizontal rows on 

 the tiny branches, like 

 the teeth of a comb, 

 and the branch with 

 its leaves may be 

 easily mistaken for a 

 single compound leaf 

 The second type of 

 leaf is tiny and scale- 

 like, and clinging 

 closely to the branch 

 and partly overlap- 

 ping it, so that the 

 branch resembles a 

 delicately wrought 

 chain of leaves. 

 Trees with foliage 

 of this kind are said 

 by some botanists 

 to be a distinct 



variety (imbricarium) of bald cypress. 



The flowers are of two kinds. The pollen is shed in 

 spring from drooping clusters of minute purple flowers. 

 The stems of the flower-clusters are 4 to 6 inches long 

 and are borne at the ends of the twigs. The seed-form- 

 ing flowers are scattered near the ends of the branches. 

 They are composed of numerous overlapping, pointed 

 scales and somewhat resemble buds. When ripened in 

 the autumn, they are transformed into brown woody 

 cones of the size and shape of a small walnut. 



The seeds are winged at one end, one-fourth to three- 

 fourths of an inch long, and each cone produces from 20 

 to 30 seeds. Because the cone contains pockets of very 

 sticky resin with a disagreeable flavor, the seeds are 

 little relished by squirrels, mice or birds. The cones open 

 and permit the seeds to escape but they are too heavy to 

 be carried far by the wind and fall near the parent trees. 

 A pound of clean bald cypress seed contains about 5000 

 separate seeds a small number compared with the 80,000 

 seeds in a pound of Norway spruce. Under ordinary 

 conditions only about half of the seeds have sufficient 

 vitality to germinate. The older trees produce some cones 

 each year and abundant crops are borne every 3 to 5 

 years. The seeds do not mature well in the northern 

 range of the tree. Since the cypress tree is an inhabitant 

 oi swamp-lands the seeds germinate best in very moist 

 places, such as wet muck or beds of sphagnum moss. 



The absolute inability of most cone-bearing trees to 

 produce even the weakest of sprouts from the stumps 



