Bald cypress

Scientific

Taxodium distichum is in the Cupressaceae (cypress family); the only deciduous-conifer species native to the southeastern U.S. (its sister species T. mucronatum, Montezuma cypress, is the national tree of Mexico). Native range: southern Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains from [[harrington-delaware|Delaware]] to Texas, north up the [[batesville-ms|Mississippi]] River valley to southern Indiana and Illinois.

Trees grow 60–120 feet tall with characteristic fluted-and-buttressed trunks; the buttress is a structural response to permanently-wet soils and is one of the species’ field-identification marks. Foliage is feathery, light green in summer, and turns rust-orange before falling in November — bald cypress is one of the few deciduous conifers in the world. Cones are small, round, and brown.

The species’ famous “knees” — conical wood projections that rise 1–6 feet above [[soil|the soil]] surface from the lateral roots in flooded sites — do not occur on trees growing in well-drained soil. The functional explanation has been debated for 150 years: early hypotheses focused on aeration (gas exchange to roots in anoxic soil), more recent work on mechanical stability (the knees’ attachment points stabilize the tree against wind in soft substrate). Both functions may apply.

Lifespan is exceptional. The 2,624-year-old Black River individual ([[asheville|North Carolina]]) is among the oldest known living organisms on Earth; many bald cypress in [[arabi|Louisiana]] and Mississippi swamps are 600–1,200 years old, growing slowly in the anoxic soils that excluded most other tree species and protected them from disturbance.

Conservation

Industrial logging from ~1890–1925 cut nearly all accessible old-growth bald cypress on the [[mississippi-delta|Mississippi delta]] and in the [[atchafalaya-basin|Atchafalaya Basin]] — the timber became the cheap, decay-resistant lumber that built much of the late-19th-century lower-Mississippi city stock. Surviving old-growth stands are at Barataria Preserve, Lake Maurepas, the Atchafalaya Basin interior, and a handful of refuges on the Sea Islands and the Carolina coastal plain.

Active threats today: saltwater intrusion in the lower delta (the species cannot tolerate sustained brackish water and large stands are dying as Gulf salinity penetrates further inland), continued nutria browsing of seedlings, and altered hydrology from levees and canals that has prevented natural cypress regeneration across most of its delta range.

See also

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• Produces: [[firewood]]
• Member of: [[plants]]
• Contained by: [[mississippi-river-delta-ecology]] · [[barataria-preserve]]