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LANDSCAPE GARDENING, 
The American Cypress Tree. Taxodium. 
Nut. Grd. Conifer®. Lin. Syst. Moncecia, Monadelphia. 
The Southern or Deciduous cypress ( Taxodium disti • 
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. 
“ 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 
* Cupressus disticha. 
