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.