Bald Cypress

The two varieties recognized in the flora are indistinguishable in reproductive characteristics and continuously intergrading in morphologic and phenologic characteristics, although pure populations of the extremes appear morphologically and ecologically distinct. Unlike the varieties in the flora, var. mexicanum is annually cladoptosic, with determinate short shoots abscising concomitantly with expansion of shoots of the following year. Specimens from juvenile individuals, stump sprouts, fertile branchlets, terminal vegetative branchlets, or late-season growth may not be determinable to variety.

Taxodium distichum (baldcypress) is the state tree of Louisiana.

The wood is used in buildings, ship construction, furniture manufacture, etc.

Trees seasonally cladoptosic; trunk enlarged basally and often conspicuously buttressed; crown monopodial and conic when young, often becoming irregularly flattopped or deliquescent (branched and so divided that the main axis cannot be determined) with age. Shoot system conspicuously dimorphic, long shoots indeterminate, bearing individually abscising, linear to lanceolate leaves, short shoots determinate, abscising in autumn with their leaves, variable, intergrading, at one extreme pendent to horizontally spreading, bearing decurrent, narrowly linear and laterally divergent leaves in 2 rows, at other extreme strictly ascending to occasionally pendent, bearing short-lanceolate to deltate and tightly appressed leaves. Pollen cones in pendent panicles to ca. 25 cm, 2--3 mm, conspicuous in winter prior to pollination. Seed cones 1.5--4 cm.

Trees deciduous, to 50 m tall; pneumatophores present or absent around trunk; trunk swollen and buttressed at base, strongly tapered upward, to 2 m d.b.h.; bark brown, reddish brown, or gray, peeling off in long strips; crown conical, finally broadly conical, or relatively narrow and pyramidal; main branches spreading horizontally or ascending; lateral branchlets 2-ranked, axis green in 1st year, turning brown or brownish red in 1st winter. Leaves 2-ranked on annual branchlets or not, light green adaxially, yellowish green or grayish green abaxially, turning dark reddish brown in autumn, linear and flat or subulate, 4-15 × ca. 1 mm, midvein depressed adaxially, raised abaxially, stomatal lines 4-8, apex acute or sharply pointed. Pollen cones borne in terminal, crowded, short, dense racemes or panicles 5-12 cm, shortly pedunculate, ovoid. Seed cones brownish yellow or white powdery, not glaucous, globose, oblong-globose, or ovoid, (1.4-)2-4 × (1.3-)1.8-3 cm; cone scales shield-shaped, woody, ± conspicuously longitudinally grooved at apex. Seeds brown or reddish brown, irregularly triangular-pyramidal, 1.2-2.6 × 0.5-2.3 cm, sharply ridged. Pollination Mar-Apr, seed maturity (Jul-)Oct.

Used for afforestation on marshy soils, and cultivated as an ornamental. Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Zhejiang [native to SE United States]

Cupressus disticha Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 2: 1003. 1753