Bartram's Giants: Florida's Majestic Cypress 
                  - Written and Contributed by James Phillips      

Her accent was right out of "Fargo," -not one you’d associate with a swamp. "Oh gee, I hope you got bug spray," she yelled, fumbling with her keys and slapping the side of her neck. "You’re sure as heck gonna need it."

She was surrounded by a half dozen kids, all of them hopping and squealing and flailing madly at the air. While I appreciated the tip, I couldn’t help wondering if this was a troupe of escaped lunatics masquerading as a family. Then I climbed out of my car, and the mosquitoes discovered me as well. As I dove for the spray can, the North Dakotans scrambled into their van and slammed the doors. I could hear them behind the tinted windows, still yelping and swatting, as they sped off in a cloud of dust.

Being a native Floridian, I guess I should’ve known better than to visit Big Cypress Bend during the summer rainy season, when mosquitoes by the billions emerge from their pupal cases and take to the air in search of their first blood meal. But I wanted to see the trees. A National Natural Landmark, Big Cypress Bend is one of the last, best places anywhere to see old growth cypresses.

Actually, I was there on the advice of another tourist -Florida’s first tree-hugger- a footloose young Philadelphian botanist named William Bartram. In the 1770’s he crisscrossed the peninsula, documenting virtually every plant and animal he encountered. He was particularly dazzled by the cypress. In his journal, he wrote:

"(It)... stands in the first order of North American trees. Its majestic stature is surprising; and on approaching it, we are struck with a kind of awe, at beholding the stateliness of the trunk, lifting its cumbrous top towards the skies, and casting a wide shade upon the ground, as a dark intervening cloud, which, for a time, excludes the rays of the sun. The delicacy of its colour, and texture of its leaves, exceed everything in vegetation."

("Travels of William Bartram", Dover Publications, Inc.)

In those days, majestic cypress forests towered over floodplains, riverbanks, and freshwater swamps throughout the American southeast. Possessing a lifespan of a thousand years or more, and growing to a height of 130 feet, they dominated the Florida landscape.

Geologically speaking, cypresses are relative newcomers -they’ve only been here about 5,000 years. In prehistoric Florida they found a land of freshwater marshes and "sloughs", long, shallow swamps formed by groundwater draining over limestone bedrock. In the sloughs, the soil was rich, moist, and acidic. There was plenty of sun in the winter and plenty of rain in the summer, and there were frequent, cyclical floods, "hydroperiods", that slowed the growth of competing vegetation. For the semi-aquatic cypress, it was an ideal environment.

There are two species: bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) and pond cypress (Taxodium ascendens). Both have silvery or reddish bark, buttressed bases, and ramrod-straight, tapering trunks. While most conifers are evergreens, cypresses are deciduous, shedding their needle-like leaves (becoming "bald") in November, and regrowing them in March. The leaves of the bald cypress are about half an inch long, and grow in two tight, opposing rows, giving their twigs a featherlike appearance. Pond cypress leaves curl upwards, and are slightly shorter. Neither tree tolerates saltwater or brackish estuaries. Pond cypresses prefer the still waters of their namesake, while bald cypresses opt for waters that are more restless -riverine swamps, floodprone bottomlands, and shallow streams. Often however, the two species grow side-by-side.

Cypresses are conifers; their seeds are encased in round cones an inch or so in diameter. To sprout, the cones have to soak for about a month, then dry out. Newly germinated seedlings grow quite rapidly. If they mature in watery or floodprone habitats they develop swollen bases that are fluted like the folds of a robe. Bald cypresses grow conical "knees", resembling half-melted candles, from their roots. Botanists once thought the knees stabilize the trees and help them breathe, but now -thanks to some inconclusive studies- they’re not so sure.

When cypresses are dominant, the slough they inhabit is called a "strand." They also form "domes," small, circular tree islands found in freshwater marshes, and around sinks or seasonal ponds. The oldest and tallest trees grow in the center, while the younger, smaller trees comprise the outer margin, where nutrients can be harder to come by. The resulting formation has a convex profile, like a water droplet on a countertop.

Although cypresses are still relatively common, few are more than 50 or 60 years old. The giants that inspired Bartram are now extremely rare. Cypress lumber is attractive, rot-resistant and easy to work, qualities that doomed the big trees and ensured they would be harvested aggressively. With the advent of the steam winch and the portable sawmill in the 1890’s, commercial loggers clear-cut swamps and wetlands with a vengeance, turning millions of acres into floodprone pastures. Throughout the south, cypresses fell like dominoes, a billion board feet a day. Florida was logged out within fifty years. By the 1950’s the towering ancients were gone, cut for shingles, siding, and barrel staves.

Today, they exist only as lone trees, or small relict forests. In south Florida, two of the best places to see them are the National Audubon Society’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, and our destination today, Big Cypress Bend, in the Fakahatchee Strand.

Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve is a unique 74,000 acre slough in the Big Cypress watershed. It’s twenty miles long by five wide, with access by means of Janes Scenic Drive at the northern end and Big Cypress Bend to the south. Reknowned among naturalists, Fakahatchee is the only mixed cypress/native Royal Palm community in the world. A variety of epiphytes, including at least forty endangered orchid species, are found here, on the trunks and branches of their cypress hosts. The strand also provides habitat for the Florida Black Bear and the Florida Panther.

Big Cypress Bend is a half hour southeast of Naples on the Tamiami Trail. If you like big trees, it’s definitely worth the drive -but mind those mosquitoes

Fortunately, I was packing some industrial strength "DEET," N-Diethyl-m-Toluamide, the most reliable mosquito repellant on the market. Even so, they continued to land on every runway that wasn’t generously foamed, including my shoes, my watch, even my cameras. A cloud of them descended on my camera bag, and when I hoisted it to my shoulder, I inhaled a couple. They did NOT taste like chicken. I applied more DEET.

Gloriously toxic, I set out for the boardwalk. The path led past an indian village, shielded from prying eyes by a freshly painted stockade. I could hear the droning chatter of a TV, then, oddly, the theme from All In The Family:

"Gee, our old La Salle ran great.

Those were the daaays..."

I came to the boardwalk. Ahead and on either side lay a riot of vines and fronds, strangler figs and giant leather ferns, an indifferent, inhospitable terrain, yielding and impenetrable at once. Here and there the giant cypresses stood, the biggest trees I’ve ever seen.

There is something about the swamp. The late author and environmentalist Edward Abbey said the same thing about the desert -there is something about it, an indefinable "quality of strangeness" that draws you deeper, until, finally, you are lost. But while Abbey concluded that the desert has no heart, I believe the heart of the swamp is before me, in the form of these immense, mysterious, magnificent trees.

These are the untamed chieftains of the cypress tribe, that endured hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires -only to face an irresistable tide of industrious settlers and energetic landsharks. That they’ve survived the last two centuries is particularly remarkable, considering the schemes of misguided visionaries and well-intentioned entrepeneurs, like the anonymous gentlemen (there were several) who sprinkled the Everglades with pestilential Melaleuca seeds, or the ill-starred saw maker Hamilton Disston, who squandered a fortune draining millions of acres of Florida swampland in the 1880’s, then took his own life.

Centuries pass, worlds rise and fall, but at Big Cypress Bend the elder trees remain, unperturbed. The weathered boardwalk winds among them, a low-tech time machine meandering deep into the past. Before you know it you’re adrift in an age only they can remember, and you feel you’re seeing Florida, the real Florida, for the first time. Those were the days.

Bartram may never have seen Big Cypress Bend, but it’s a safe bet he would’ve liked it. It’s true that the endless strands of old growth he praised so passionately are gone; we won’t see their like again in our lifetimes. But on protected lands throughout the southeast, young cypresses thrive. If we’re responsible stewards, someday the old growth will return.