The Bald Cypress of Karl-Heine-Strasse

A bald cypress on a Leipzig pavement is a long way from home. The species grows wild in the swamps of the American southeast, where its roots throw up woody knees through standing water; on a dry Plagwitz street it has none of that, just a straight trunk and the soft, feathery foliage that turns copper before dropping in autumn, unusual for a conifer. The city protects it as a Naturdenkmal, standing directly beside a European white elm under the same designation. Neither the planting date nor the girth is in the record we could find, only the fact of its protection. Four more protected trees stand within about 150 metres along the same street: a ginkgo, a copper beech and a Japanese pagoda tree among them, an unlikely collection of species for one short block. Bald cypress is also one of the few conifers that drops its foliage entirely for winter, needles and all, rather than staying evergreen, which is why the street looks bare under it by December where the ginkgo down the road has already dropped its own leaves weeks before.