Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/618

 614 CYPKESS CYPRIAN count of its natural tendency to grow upright. The C. horizontal (Duhamel) has spreading branches, which when loaded, as they usually are, with large round cones, render the tree a beautiful object. It is considered only a fine variety of the common cypress. The Portu- guese cypress (C. Lusitanica, Tournefort), a native of Goa in the East Indies, has flexuous, spreading branches, and imbricated, acute, keeled, glaucous, adpressed leaves in four rows. It has been long naturalized hi Portugal, where it attains a large size. The weeping cypress (C. pendula, Thunberg) is a native of China; it has a large, expanded head, and dichotomous branches, which are much divided ; its leaves are imbricated in four rows, are rather stem- clasping and triquetrous, keeled, and adpressed. According to Loudon, some uncertainty is at- tached to this species. Mention is made of it in Lambert's " Pines " and in Staunton's " Em- bassy," and it is the Jimoro of Kampfer. In Spreading Cypress (Cupressus horizontalis). the United States, the cypress is represented in the white cedar. II. The deciduous cypress (taxodium distichum, Richard) is a stately tree of the pine family, much admired for its foli- age of a most delicate light green, which falls in autumn after turning to a bright tawny col- or. Its leaves are linear and spreading, awl- shaped, and imbricated on the branches which produce the flowers ; its seed vessels or stro- biles are small, subglobose, and formed of an- gular woody scales. This lofty tree is a native of the middle and southern states of North America, extending from Delaware to the ex- treme south. Its trunk is very thick, often from 25 to 40 ft. in circumference at the base, and attaining to 120 ft. in height. The branch- lets are very slender, elegantly pinnate ; the leaves pectinate and distichous, spreading hori- zontally from being twisted at the base, linear, mucronulate, flat, one-nerved, glabrous on both sides, light green, margins acute, exterior some- what convex, half an inch or more in length, and about a line broad. The tree, as it grows old, according to Michaux, has a spreading, broad head ; but it assumes a great variety of forms, when raised artificially from the seeds. Loudon, in his Ar- boretum Britanni- cum, enumerates four principal forms, viz. : 1, the species having the branches hori- zontal, or somewhat inclined upward; 2, with the branches pendulous ; 3, with the branches hori- zontal, and the young shoots of the year pendulous, the leaves being twisted and compressed around them in the early part of the season, but fully expanded, like those of the species, toward au- tumn ; 4, with the leaves on the young shoots tortuous, and the branches pendu- lous. It is in the southern states, par- ticularly in Florida, that the deciduous cypress attains its largest size, when it grows in the deep, miry soil of the swamps. The base of its trunk is usually hol- low for three fourths of its bulk, and its sur- face is longitudinally furrowed with deep tor- tuous channels. The roots of the large trees, particularly in situations exposed to inunda- tions, have strange-looking conical protuberan- ces, called cypress knees, which rise above the soil about 2 ft. in height, and sometimes from 4 to 5 ft. in thickness ; these are hollow, smooth, and covered with a reddish bark like the roots, which they resemble also in the softness of the wood. The wood of the trunk is esteemed for timber, and being imperishable under water, is largely used for foundations of buildings and for piles in wet localities. It is also in- valuable for carpentry, being straight grained, soft, and easily worked. In the swamps of the south and of New Jersey immense num- bers of fallen cypress trunks are found at considerable depths, and in sound condition notwithstanding the great length of time that they must have been submerged. CYPRIAN, Thascins Caecilins, a Christian saint, bishop, and martyr, born at Carthage, died Sept. 14, 258. To his proper name of Thascius Cyprianus he added Csecilius, in gratitude to a Carthaginian priest of that name who had been instrumental in his conversion. His authen- Deciduous Cypress (Taxodium distichum).