Nyssa 513 
IDENTIFICATION. (See under WVyssa sylvatica) 
In winter, specimens from the tree at White Knights showed the following 
characters :—Twigs stout, pubescent near the tip, glabrescent elsewhere. Leaf-scars 
slightly oblique on prominent pulvini, almost orbicular or obcordate, notched in the 
upper margin, surrounded by a slightly raised rim, and marked by three conspicuous 
bundle-dots. Lateral buds minute, globose, two-scaled, reddish, shining, glabrous, 
arising in the notch of the leaf-scar. Terminal buds nearly globose, short and broad, 
with four to five thick, pubescent, reddish scales, keeled on the back and apiculate at 
the apex; in December the three outermost scales had dropped the apiculus and 
showed a truncate apex with a terminal scar. The base of the shoot is marked by 
ring-like scars as in Vyssa sylvatica. 
DISTRIBUTION 
Nyssa aquatica is found growing in swamps throughout the coast region of the 
United States, from Southern Virginia to Texas, and in the Mississippi valley, in 
Arkansas, Southern and South-Eastern Missouri, Western Kentucky, and Tennessee, 
and in the valley of the lower Wabash River in I]linois. 
An interesting account of the peculiar habit of this tree, as observed in the 
swamps of Arkansas, is given by Coulter... Occurring in company with Taxodium 
distichum, wherever the ground is inundated with water, the trunk develops an 
enlarged, dome-like base, often of immense size. A tree only 45 feet high, of which 
a figure is given, had a swollen base 55 feet in girth at the point where the roots 
entered the ground. When the water-supply is scanty the base is only slightly 
enlarged; and trees growing in dry soil show no swelling of the trunk. Coulter 
saw numerous seedlings of Nyssa, and concludes that it is gradually ousting from 
the swamps the Deciduous Cypress, which rarely seeds itself. Wilson® states that 
around the swollen base of these trees in the swamps there are masses of roots 
extending 6 to 8 inches above high-water line, each root going vertically up out of 
the water, and after a sharp bend going down into the water again. He compares 
these roots, rising above the water for purposes of aeration, with the knees of 
Taxodium. 
CULTIVATION 
Nyssa aquatica was cultivated*® by Collinson near London in 1735. It is now 
scarcely known in cultivation in England, the only tree which we have found being- 
one at White Knights Park, Reading, the residence of T. Friedlander, Esq. It 
is a slender tree, about 36 feet by 2 feet 2 inches, which looks of considerable age 
and is not vigorous in growth. Loudon‘ states that most of the trees which he saw 
at White Knights in 1833 were planted between 1790 and 1810; and one was a fine 
specimen * of Vyssa aquatica, perhaps identical with the tree now living. 
1 Report Missouri Bot. Garden, 1904, xv. 56, plates 18, 19. 2 Proc. Philadelphia Acad, Nat, Sc. 1889, p. 69. 
3 Aiton, Hort, Kew, iii. 446 (1789). 4 Gardeners’ Magazine, ix. 664 (1833). 
5 This tree is not referred to by Loudon in his large work, published in 1838. 
