240 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
chum*) is one of the most majestic, useful, and beautiful trees 
of the southern part of North America. Naturally, it is 
not found growing north of Maryland, or the south part 
of Delaware, but below that boundary it becomes extremely 
multiplied. The low grounds and alluvial soils subject to 
inundations, are constantly covered with this tree ; and on 
the banks of the Mississippi, and other great western rivers, 
for more than 600 miles from its mouth, those vast marshes, 
caused by the periodical bursting and overflowing of their 
banks, are filled with huge and almost endless growths of 
this tree, called Cypress swamps. Beyond the boundaries 
of the United States, its geographical range extends to 
Mexico ; and Michaux estimates that it is found more or 
less abundantly, over a range of country more than 3000 
miles in extent. 
il In the swamps of the southern states and the Floridas, 
on whose deep miry soil a new layer of vegetable mould is 
deposited every year by the floods, the Cypress attains its 
utmost development. The largest stocks are 120 feet in 
height, and from 25 to 40 feet in circumference, above the 
conical base, which at the surface of the earth is always 
three or four times as large as the continued diameter of the 
trunk; in felling them, the negroes are obliged to raise 
themselves upon scaffolds five or six feet from the ground. 
The roots of the largest stocks, particularly of such as are 
most exposed to inundation, are charged with conical pro- 
tuberances, commonly from eighteen to twenty-four inches, 
and sometimes four or five feet in thickness; these are 
always hollow, smooth on the surface, and covered with a 
reddish bark, like the roots which they resemble also in the 
softness of their wood ; they exhibit no sign of vegetation, 
Cupressus disticha. 
