Michaux remarks that in the Southern swamps which are occupied by the Northern and Southern Cypress, the former “are observed to choose the centre of the swamps, and the southern cypresses the circumference.” In the region of the southern cypress the cedar swamps are skirted by the tupelo and the red maple. There is but little superficial resemblance between the two cypresses. The foliage of the Northern tree is evergreen. “Each leaf,” says Michaux, “is a little branch numerously subdivided, and composed of small, acute, imbricated scales, on the back of which a minute gland is discovered with the lens. In the angle of these ramifications grow the flowers, which are scarcely visible, and which produce very small rugged cones of a greenish tint, that change to bluish towards the fall, when they open to release the fine seeds.”
THE SOUTHERN CYPRESS.
We have read more perhaps of the Southern Cypress than of any other American tree; but what we have read relates to some of its peculiarities, such as the stumps that grow up among the perfect trees, and of which, in the economy of nature, it is difficult to discover the advantages. We have read also of the immense gloomy swamps that are shaded by trees of this species; of the long mosses, called the “garlands of death,” that hang from their branches, rendering the scene still more gloomy. But from all our reading we should not discover what is immediately apparent to our observation, when we see this tree, that it is one of the most beautiful of the forest.
The Southern Cypress is beginning to be prized here as an ornamental tree, and the few standards in the enclosures of suburban estates will convince any one that no species has been brought from the South that surpasses it in elegance and beauty. The larch, which is a favorite ornamental tree, will not compare with it, though there is some superficial resemblance between it and the American larch. They are both deciduous; and their foliage is brighter in the summer than that of other conifers. The leaves of the deciduous Cypress are of the most delicate texture, of a light green, and arranged in neat opposite rows, like those of the hemlock, on the slender terminal branches.
Michaux remarks that the banks of the Indian River, a small stream in Delaware, are the northern boundary of the deciduous Cypress. He says it occupies an area of more than fifteen hundred miles. The largest trees are found in the swamps that contain a deep, miry soil, with a surface of vegetable mould, renewed every year by floods. Some of these trees are “one hundred and twenty feet in height, and from twenty-five to forty feet in circumference at 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 base is usually hollow for three quarters of its bulk.” The conical protuberances for which this tree is remarkable come from the roots of the largest trees, particularly of those in very wet soils. “They are,” says Michaux, “commonly from eighteen to twenty-four inches in height, and sometimes from four to five feet in thickness. They 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 signs of vegetation, and I have never succeeded in obtaining shoots by wounding their surface and covering them with earth. No cause can be assigned for their existence. They are peculiar to the Cypress, and begin to appear when it is twenty or twenty-five feet in height. They are made use of only by the negroes for beehives.”
The leaves of the Cypress seem like pinnate leaves, with two rows of leaflets. Their tint is of a light and very bright green, which gives the tree a liveliness, when in full foliage, that is displayed but by few other trees. But as the foliage is deciduous, and as the branches in its native swamps are covered by long tresses of black moss, when it has shed its leaves nothing in nature can present a more gloomy appearance. In a dense wood, the foliage is very thin, giving rise to the name of the Bald Cypress, so that it is only on the outside of the forest that the tree can be considered beautiful. Its spray is of as fine a texture as the leaves. When the tree is young it is pyramidal, but the old trees are invariably flattened at the top.
The wood of this tree, though soft, is very durable, fine grained, and of a reddish color, and is extensively used for the same purposes for which the wood of the white pine is employed.
THE JUNIPER.
The Juniper is an historical tree, and has been the subject of many interesting traditions,—supposed by the ancients to yield a shade that was injurious to human life; the emblem of faith, because its heart is always sound; the bearer of fruit regarded as a panacea for all diseases, and a magic charm which was thrown on the funeral pile to protect the spirit of the dead from evil, and bound with the leaves to propitiate the deities by their incense. It is not improbable that the superstitious notions respecting the power of its fruit to heal diseases gave origin to the use of it in the manufacture of certain alcoholic liquors; and it is a remarkable fact that universal belief in its virtues as a panacea should have attached to a plant which is now used for no important medical purpose whatever save the flavoring of gin!
The Juniper, very generally called the Red Cedar, and known in many places as the Savin, is well known to all our people, and is associated with the most rugged scenery of our coast. On all our rocky hills which have been stripped of their original growth the Juniper springs up as if it found there a soil congenial to its wants. On the contrary, the soil is very poorly adapted to it, for the tree never attains a good size in these situations. Its presence there may be attributed to the birds that feed in winter upon its fruit, and scatter its seeds while in quest of dormant insects among the sods. As we journey southward, we find this tree in perfection in New Jersey and Maryland; and in all the Atlantic States south of Long Island Sound the Junipers are large and thrifty trees.