1890] The Knees of the Taxodium distichum. 335 
Until recently this aerating theory seems to have met with no op- 
position, and it bid fair to become the generally accepted explana- 
tion for these strange vegetable growths, which travelers in our 
Southern states so often observe and mention. 
A paper in Garden and Forest, the result of careful studies in 
Florida, which we now reproduce, will be found interesting because 
it explains the same phenomena upon an entirely different assump- 
tion. It is as follows: 
From time to time, during and since my first visit to our southern 
tier of states in 1876, I have examined, sketched and photographed 
the roots of the Deciduous Cypress—the Taxodium distichum of 
Richard. I was attracted to the tree because of the singular beauty of 
its forms and foliage, and by the unusual boldness with which it raises 
its great, gray, smooth column, sometimes over a hundred feet perpen- 
dicularly, above and upon what an engineer would pronounce a most 
dangerous foundation—loose submerged sand, the saturated morass or 
the soft alluvium of low river margins.! But notwithstanding this 
seeming insecurity, I have never found a healthy cypress that had fallen 
before the fierce hurricanes that sweep through the southern forest- 
lands.? 
The surprising and characteristic temerity of the tree is accompanied 
by another striking peculiarity—it almost invariably, in soft soils, 
throws upward from the upper surface of its roots conspicuous protu- 
berances that are known as ‘‘ Cypress knees.’’ 
These seemingly abnormal growths have attracted much attention, 
and for more than half a century haye furnished an enigma to the so- 
1 It is a pleasure to follow Bartram in his enthusiastic burst of admiration for this tree 

as he writes of it in east Florida 116 years ago: ‘‘ This Cypress is in ‘the first order of 
North American trees. Its e E is EAE On approaching it we are 
struck with a kind of it: abies lifting its cumbrous top 
toward the skies and casting a wide shade on the groun a dark intervening cloud, 
which from time to time excludes the rays of the sun ey delicacy of its co he 
texture of 2 leaves exceed everything in veg Prodigious bui 
m the on every side, each of which terminates underground in a very large, 
strong, Ain met which strikes ae 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 lares and two feet in diameter at the base 
2 Elliot (“ Bot. of S. C. and Ga.,” 1824, p. 643) says: “ This Cypress resists the vio- 
` lence of our autumnal gales better than any other of our forest trees.” y friend, 
By m 
Dr. J. S. Newberry, whose extended geological labors have led him to irait many 
widely separated Cypress-bearing regions in the Mississippi Valley and elsewhere, I am 
assured that he remembers no instance of the overthrow by the wind of a living T. dis- 
