8. TAXODIUM Rich. Bald Cypress.
Resinous trees, with furrowed scaly bark, light brown durable heartwood, thin white sapwood, erect ultimately spreading branches, deciduous usually 2-ranked lateral branchlets, scaly globose buds, and stout horizontal roots often producing erect woody projections (knees). Leaves spirally disposed, pale and marked with stomata below on both sides of the obscure midrib, dark green above, linear-lanceolate, spreading in 2 ranks, or scale-like and appressed on lateral branchlets, the two forms appearing on the same or on different branches of the same tree or on separate trees, deciduous. Flowers unisexual, from buds formed the previous year; male in the axils of scale-like bracts in long terminal drooping panicles, with 6—8 stamens opposite in 2 ranks, their filaments abruptly enlarged into broadly ovate peltate yellow connectives bearing on their inner face in 2 rows 4—9 2-valved pendulous anther-cells; female scattered near the ends of the branches of the previous year, subglobose, composed of numerous ovate spirally arranged long-pointed scales, adnate below to the thickened fleshy ovuliferous scales bearing at their base 2 erect bottle-shaped ovules. Fruit a globose or obovoid short-stalked woody cone maturing the first year and persistent after the escape of the seeds, formed from the enlargement and union of the flower and ovule-bearing scales abruptly dilated from slender stipes into irregularly 4-sided disks often mucronate at maturity, bearing on the inner face, especially on the stipes, large dark glands filled with blood-red fragrant liquid resin. Seeds in pairs under each scale, attached laterally to the stipes, erect, unequally 3-angled; seed-coat light brown and lustrous, thick, coriaceous or corky, produced into 3 thick unequal lateral wings and below into a slender elongated point; cotyledons 4—9, shorter than the superior radicle.
Taxodium, widely distributed through North America and Europe in Miocene and Pliocene times, is now confined to the southern United States and Mexico. Two species are distinguished.
The generic name, from τάξος and εῖδος, indicates a resemblance of the leaves to those of the Yew-tree.
1. [Taxodium distichum] Rich. Bald Cypress. Deciduous Cypress.
Leaves on distichously spreading branchlets, apiculate, ½′—¾′ long, about 1/12′ wide, light bright yellow-green or occasionally silvery white below; or on the form with pendulous compressed branchlets long-pointed, keeled and stomatiferous below, concave above more or less spreading at the free apex, about ½′ long; in the autumn turning with the branchlets dull orange-brown before falling. Flowers: panicles of staminate flowers 4′—5′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, with slender red-brown stems, obovoid flower-buds nearly ⅛′ long, pale silvery-gray during winter and purple when the flowers expand in the spring. Fruit usually produced in pairs at the end of the branch or irregularly scattered along it for several inches, nearly globose or obovoid, rugose, about 1′ in diameter, the scales generally destitute of tips; seeds with wings nearly ¼′ long, ⅛′ wide.
A tree, with a tall lobed gradually tapering trunk, rarely 12° and generally 4°—5° in diameter above the abruptly enlarged strongly buttressed usually hollow base, occasionally 150° tall, in youth pyramidal, with slender branches often becoming elongated and slightly pendulous, in old age spreading out into a broad low rounded crown often 100° across, and slender branchlets light green when they first appear, light red-brown and rather lustrous during their first winter, becoming darker the following year, the lateral branchlets deciduous, 3′—4′ long, spreading at right angles to the branch, or in the form with acicular leaves pendulous or erect and often 6′ long. Bark 1′—2′ thick, light cinnamon-red and divided by shallow fissures into broad flat ridges separating on the surface into long thin closely appressed fibrous scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, easily worked, light or dark brown, sometimes nearly black; largely used for construction, railway-ties, posts, fences, and in cooperage.
Distribution. River swamps usually submerged during several months of the year, low wet banks of streams, and the wet depressions of Pine-barrens from southern New Jersey and southern Delaware southward generally near the coast to the Everglade Keys, southern Florida, and through the Gulf-coast region to the valley of Devil River, Texas, through Louisiana to southern Oklahoma, through southern and western Arkansas to southeastern Missouri, and through western and northern Mississippi to Tishomingo County, and in western Tennessee and Kentucky to southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana; most common and of its largest size in the south Atlantic and Gulf states, often covering with nearly pure forests great river swamps. From the coast of North Carolina to southern Florida, southern Alabama and eastern and western Louisiana the form with acicular leaves (Taxodium distichum var. imbricarium, Sarg.) is not rare as a small tree in Pine-barren ponds and swamps.
Often cultivated as an ornamental tree in the northern United States, and in the countries of temperate Europe, especially the var. imbricarium (as Glyptostrobus sinensis Hort. not Endl.).