106 



ago, when the coastal plain deposits extended farther inland 

 than they do now. 



In Alabama the locality for Taxodium distichum farthest 

 removed from the coastal plain, and the only one north of the 

 Tennessee River, as far as known, is on Cypress Creek in Laud- 

 erdale County. There it is common for a few miles along the 

 creek near its mouth, just west of Florence, about 400 feet above 

 sea-level, but I have not observed it on the river near by. Ac- 

 cording to the geological maps the nearest coastal plain deposits 

 are about 15 miles away (some west and some south), and all 

 on uplands, at least 200 if not 300 feet higher. Presumably 

 these deposits (of the Tuscaloosa formation, of Cretaceous age) 

 once filled the Tennessee River lowlands too, but have been 

 removed by erosion. 



There is also a good deal of cypress along Bear Creek in 

 Colbert County, nearly all the way down to its mouth, but 

 little or none along the river adjacent, probably because the 

 seasonal fluctuations of the river are too great. 3 This creek rises 

 in the plateau region, and enters the Tennessee River from the 

 south at the Alabama-Mississippi line, after crossing the state 

 line a few times in its northward course. According to the 1926 

 geological map of Alabama its bed is all in Paleozoic rocks, 

 mostly limestones, but the Tuscaloosa formation, consisting 

 mostly of sand, gravel and clay, caps the hills on both sides of 

 it close by. The accuracy of some of this mapping is open to 

 question, however, as will be shown below. 



The government soil map of Franklin County, Alabama 

 (date of publication not indicated, but apparently 1932) shows 

 a large "Cypress Slough" in the western part of the county, 

 about three miles east of Red Bay and a mile northeast of Bear 

 Creek; and as I had no previous record of Taxodium in that 

 county, I visited the place on March 18, 1933. The geological 

 map shows the creek at that point to be bordered by a strip 

 of Paleozoic (Mississippian) limestone at least half a mile wide 

 on either side; but I found a steep gravelly bluff on the south 

 side and flat loamy bottoms about a mile wide and mostly culti- 



3 See Science II. 36: 760-761. Nov. 29, 1912. Both the Cypress Creek and 

 the Bear Creek localities, which I had known since 1906, were inadvertently 

 omitted from the ditribution map of Taxodium on page 64 of my Alabama tree 

 volume previously cited. 



