188 PRAGCLICAL AkKBORICULTURE 
THE CYPRESS OF COMMERCE. 
(Tavodium distichunt.) 
RAPID DISAPPEARANCE OF THIS SOUTHERN TREE 
Timber, lumber and trees are variously designated, the nomenclature of lum- 
vermen differing frequently from that of the botanist; for instance, Liriodendron 
tulipifera 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 Tuwrod ina 
distichum, 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 drv ground. But, 
mark vou, 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 wth 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 evpress 
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 
evpress merchant knows that to find his timber he must search for it in the marshes. 
The name bald evpress 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. 
Tn 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. 
