a tale of two cypresses

Cypresses I have known/loved:
Bald cypress (above);
Montezuma cypress (below)

     Back in the early/mid 90s, University of Louisiana-Lafayette student/Acadiana Park Nature Station naturalist Michelle Harper presented me with a seedling of a Montezuma cypress that she had found growing in a greenhouse gutter behind the biology building at ULL. Many moon ago, someone had planted a Montezuma there, and it had grown to massive proportions.

     I duly planted Michelle's gift off of the west wall of our house in an attempt to mitigate the harshness of the summer/afternoon sun against our west wall. I had heard from Texas native plant friends that Montezuma cypress was “kneeless,” as opposed to our native bald cypress, which throws knees left and right, so I plopped it in the ground a mere 8' from the house.

     In relatively short order (ca. 15 years), the Montezuma – a mere toothpick of a plant when Michelle gave it to me – has grown to a height of 70', which is about equal to that of the bald cypress that Lydia and I had planted about 50' away on the north side of our house in 1983! Truly a jack-and-the-beanstalk type situation. Apparently, Montezuma cypress appreciates our swampy, “blackjack” clay as much as bald cypress does.

     The bald cypress ranges natively from the Texas Hill Country east through Florida and north to southern Illinois, whereas the Montezuma cypress is predominately a Mexican species, natively pushing its way north of the Rio Grande only into a few of the southernmost counties of Texas.

     Though half of the foliage is gone on the two late-fall photos (above), you may note that compared to bald cypress, Montezuma cypress possesses a moderately “weepy” foliage habit – perhaps owing to the fact that Montezuma cypress leaves are a tad shorter, and its needles a tad longer, than those of bald cypress.

Bald cypress leaf (left); Montezuma cypress leaf (right)

     Both bald and Montezuma cypresses belong to the cypress family (Cupressaceae), and both belong to the genus Taxodium. Up until recently, bald (Taxodium distichum), pond (Taxodium nutans), and Montezuma (Taxodium mucronatum) cypresses, along with close California relatives coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron gigantium), and dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), from China were given their own family (Taxodiaceae); but they have recently been lumped back into Cupressaceae, still a fairly small family, now containing 29 genera and 146 species distributed throughout both hemispheres.

     The story surrounding the dawn redwood is most interesting. It was not discovered (by science, anyway...) until 1944, when a Chinese botanist found a small grove of it – part of a religious shrine, actually – in the Sichuan-Hubei region of that country. The news eventually hit the U.S., and by 1948 Harvard's Arnold Arboretum sent an expedition over to China to collect seed from the tree. Virtually every dawn redwood grown in the U.S. today comes from that original seedlot. Since its initial discovery, dawn redwood has been discovered in only a few other places in China, and is presently listed as “Critically Threatened” in the wild.

     All of these close relatives are known for the huge sizes they attain – redwoods and sequias, up to 300'; dawn redwood, bald and Montezuma cypresses, up to 200'. Do yourself a favor and check out the legendary grand champion Montezuma cypress in the village of Santa Maria del Tule in Oaxaca, Mexico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxodium_mucronatum) – not so tall (ca. 140') but with a trunk diameter approaching 38'! And what about the grand champion bald cypress, located right here in good ol' Louisiana within the Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge in the Mississippi River backwaters just north of St. Francisville (http://www.fws.gov/refuges/profiles/index.cfm?id=43697)? Whoa. Ya'll oughta drive over to see that one. You'll need to make your trip during the dry season, as the site is often flooded under 15' of Mississippi River backwaters.

Yellow-rumped Warbler
(photo by Russ Norwood, http://www.perceptivist.com/)

     One last note. This fall, when the usual “flocklet” of Yellow-rumped Warblers arrived to overwinter in our yard, I found it interesting that they immediately zipped up into the Montezuma cypress for a foraging session, eschewing all other trees, including the native bald cypress. Of course I have no idea as to what they were hunting for, but apparently the Montezuma had it – or at least more of it – than any of the other trees.