i88 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 



THE CYPRESS OF COMMERCE. 



(Ta.vodium disticlium.) 



RAPID DISAPPEARANCE OF THIS SOUTHERN TREE 



Timber, lumber and trees are variously designated, the nomenclature of lum- 

 bermen differing frequently from that of the botanist ; for instance, Liriodcndron 

 iulipifera as called by the botanist would sound strange to the builder who wishes 

 to purchase a bill of yellow poplar lumber, while the nurseryman responds to the 

 demand for tulip trees, which more nearly suits his ideas of the same tree. 



Just so the botanist classifies the bald cypress of the woodsman as Ta.rodiitin 

 disticlium, while the lumberman merely says cypress, and by this name it goes in 

 commerce. 



This valuable lumber tree occupies the swamps of Louisiana, extends into 

 Florida and other Southern States where swamp lands exist, reaching northward 

 into Southern Indiana and Illinois. 



The trees grow in water, often several feet in depth, apparently delighted with 

 their environments, and seldom are they found in nature upon dry ground. But, 

 mark you, the cypress sends up from its roots those great conical excrescenses, 

 called cypress knees, which reach out of the water into the atmosphere for a breath 

 of fresh air to mingle with its sap; it must breathe air, and this it cannot do be- 

 neath the water. 



Planted upon high, dry land, these knees, being unnecessary, are never 

 formed. It is a popular fallacy which supposes the cypress to be only a swamp 

 tree. There are no swamps in Shaw's Garden. St. Louis, or in Spring Grove Cem- 

 tery, Cincinnati, nor in many other places throughout the North where the cypiv>s 

 is growing thriftily and with better results than in wet locations. It simply adapts 

 itself to swampy conditions under compulsion as but few trees can do. Still the 

 cypress merchant knows that to find his timber he must search for it in the marshes. 



The name bald cypress given it from the broad, spreading angular branches at 

 extreme top of the trees, reaching out over the tops of all its fellows of the 

 swamp, its trunk being bare of limbs throughout its length until these spreading 

 arms are reached. 



In youth, and in the open, the form of the tree is symmetrically conical and 

 formal, but in thick forest all these lower branches are eliminated, and having 

 reached the limit of its upward height, and age creeps on, its baldness becomes 

 apparent. 



