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Bald Cypress (Cypress family) – September

Taxodium distichum
Origin: Southeastern United States

Taxo_Taxodium-distichum_MSBG-J19-3The land mass early European explorers discovered when stepping off ships some five hundred years ago would be frankly, unrecognizable to many Americans living today— perhaps no part of our nation experienced as much ecological loss as the South. The great longleaf pine forests have all but disappeared, lost to logging and development. The great cypress swamps, growing uninterrupted from Florida north to Virginia, and from New Orleans up to Chicago, are all but gone as well, and for the same reasons. Cypress trees are long-lived, slow-growing giants of the swamp, growing straight and tall with wood equipped with chemical weapons to fight off pests and decay. What this translates into in human terms is ship masts and railroad trellises, long board-feet, and rot- and termite-resistant wood. Beyond simple logging of the old-growth cypress forests, which would have been devastating enough, the habitats that the trees grew in were changed so radically that reforestation just didn’t happen in most places. Entire swamps in Georgia and Florida were drained, built up, and developed. Areas which were once flooded for most of the year were suddenly able to accommodate cattle and eventually strip malls. The great floodplains of southern rivers, most notably the Mississippi, were domesticated as well. As port cities on rivers developed, the millennia-old seasonal flooding of the area around the river, known as the flood plain, became a damaging liability to property. Through human ingenuity and hard work, we have tried our best to create permanence and stability in a natural system based on change.

Bald cypress get their common name from the fact that they are deciduous trees, which is an uncommon habit for a conifer (a “conifer” is a tree which produces cones rather than flowers, and whose leaves are referred to as “needles,”; pines and spruces being other examples). As the days get shorter, the needles begin to brown and fall off (Taxodium plays a critical role in Florida’s “fall color”) until the trees are completely bald save for the pounds of tillandsias, Spanish moss in particular, usually found on older trees. Preferring moist to flooded areas, the tree’s seeds can’t germinate underwater, so know that when you see a cypress, the ground from which it grows is exposed occasionally, even if at the time it is submerged in swamp. Another interesting aspect of taxodium’s growth habit is something called “cypress knees,” a reference to woody structures which grow from the roots of the tree upward, looking like polished knobs emerging from the swamp. Not only do these interesting bits of anatomy provide a critical and unique part of the aesthetics of a southern swamp, perhaps even more interesting is that we don’t know what they’re there for. And it’s mysteries that make science so interesting, and ecology so important.

There are a few bald cypress trees here at Selby Gardens, including one of the tallest trees on campus, in the Greenhouse complex and visible from Palm Avenue. There is a younger tree at the very northern end of the Gardens in our Florida native plants area; this specimen is planted near the tidal lagoon in a wet area and has a lot of beautiful cypress knees. The tree in the greenhouse area doesn’t have many knees in the dry areas around its base, but one of our greenhouses nearby with a misting system and consistently moist soil is full of cypress knees coming up from the roots below.

Text by David Troxell