torrp:ya 



Vol. 8. 



October,* 1908 



No. 10. 



A MIOCENE CYPRESS SWAMP 



By Edward W. Bkrry 



Bartram writing before the American Revolution has this to 

 say of the cypress : " This Cypress is in the first order of 

 North American trees. Its majestic stature is surprising. On 

 approaching it we are struck with a kind of awe at beholding the 

 stateliness of its trunk. . . . The delicacy of its color and the 

 texture of its leaves exceed everything in vegetation. . . . Pro- 

 digious butresses branch from the trunk on every side, each of 

 which terminates underground in a very large, strong serpentine 

 root, which strikes off and branches every way just under the 

 surface of the earth, and from these roots grow woody cones, 

 called Cypress knees, four, five and six feet high, and from six 

 to eighteen inches and two feet in diameter at the base." 



At the present time the bald cypress does not extend north- 

 ward above latitude 39° which it almost reaches in both Dela- 

 ware and Indiana. During the Pleistocene, however, following 

 the final retreat of the ice it flourished considerably farther north- 

 ward, buried cypress swamps of Pleistocene age being a feature 

 of these and somewhat earlier deposits. They are exposed at 

 innumerable points in our coastal plain from Maryland south- 

 ward wherever the rivers have happened to cut into them, often 

 exhibiting the remains of huge stumps with their wide-spreading 

 roots and knees, the peaty matrix crowded with twigs, cone- 

 scales, and seeds. It seems evident from this, and other evidence 

 of a subfossil character, that at the present time the cypress is grad- 

 ually becoming more restricted in its range. When we go back to 



[No. 9, Vol. 8, ToRREYA, comprising pages 209-232, was issued September 26, 

 1908.] 



* Dr. Gager's paper on Radioactivity and Life, which was to be a part of tliis 

 number, will, unfortunately, have to be delayed. 



233 



