| from the November 1, 2009 Newsletter, from near Natchez,
Mississippi BALDCYPRESSES IN THORNBURG LAKE Thornburg Lake is a locally famous fishing spot in Anna's Bottom, at the end of a Pecan-tree bordered, one-lane gravel road that first passes across big fields of cotton and soybeans, then through bottomland forest. The lake is shallow and here and there all the way across it Baldcypress trees, TAXODIUM DISTICHUM, rise like ships from the water, as shown above. The trees' leaves are brown because Baldcypresses, despite being gymnosperms like pines and spruces, are deciduous, and it's time for leaves to fall. It's also time for the trees to bear fruits. You can see both the trees' feathery leaves and spherical fruits below:
I'll bet that several folks who know their trees are looking at the above pictures wondering whether, with those oversized trunks for such short trees, and light gray bark, those might not really be Pondcypresses. Some field guides recognize Pondcypresses as a separate species, Taxodium ascendens. The Flora of North America, however, relegates Pondcypresses to varietal status, Taxodium distichum var. imbricarium, plus the distribution map for the variety places southwest Mississippi outside its range, as seen at http://efloras.org/object_page.aspx?object_id=7080&flora_id=1. I don't know what the Pondcypress deal is in this area but I do know I love Baldcypresses. In the western Kentucky bottomlands in which I grew up I was surrounded by "cypress swamps," the nearby stream was "Cypress Creek," and to me no ecosystem was more interesting and exciting than wherever Baldcypresses showed up. When I waded into them I always saw species of waterfowl, aquatic mammals, snakes, insects, spiders and the like not found elsewhere. Just thinking of Baldcypresses evokes for me a feeling of discovery and adventure. In western Kentucky we were near the northernmost extension of Baldcypress distribution, as seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Baldcypress_range.jpg. |
