234 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



THE AMERICAN CYPRESS TREE. Taxodium. 



Nat. Or A. Coniferae. Lin. Syst. Moncecia, Monadelphia. 



The Southern or Deciduous cypress (Taxodium disti* 

 chum)* is one of the most majestic, useful, and beautiful 

 trees of the southern part of North America. Naturally, it 

 is not found growing north of Maryland, or the south part 

 of Delaware, but below that boundary it becomes extremely 

 multiplied. The low grounds and alluvial soils subject to 

 inundations, are constantly covered with this tree ; and on 

 the banks of the Mississippi and other great western rivers, 

 for more than 600 miles from its mouth, those vast marshes, 

 caused by the periodical bursting and overflowing of their 

 banks, are filled with huge and almost endless growths of 

 this tree, called Cypress swamps. Beyond the boundaries 

 of the United States its geographical range extends to 

 Mexico ; and Michaux estimates that it is found more or 

 less abundantly, over a range of country more than 3000 

 miles in extent. 



" In the swamps of the southern states and the Floridas, 

 on whose deep, miry soil a new layer of vegetable mould 

 is deposited every year by the floods, the Cypress attains 

 its utmost development. The largest stocks are 120 feet 

 in height, and from 25 to 40 feet in circumference above 

 the conical base, which at the surface of the earth is always 

 three or four times as large as the continued diameter of 

 the trunk ; in felling them, the negroes are obliged to raise 

 themselves upon scaffolds five or six feet from the ground 

 The roots of the largest stocks, particularly of such as are 



* Cupressus disticha. 



