The Bald Cypress of the Tête d'Or

This tree grows as though it remembers the Louisiana wetlands its species comes from, even landlocked in a Lyon park more than eight thousand kilometres away. Taxodium distichum is one of the few conifers that sheds its needles every autumn, and where it grows in standing water, it sends up woody knees, called pneumatophores, that poke above the surface to bring oxygen to submerged roots, a trait this specimen displays even without the flooded ground its Gulf Coast relatives depend on. A dendrological survey recorded its girth at 5.45 metres a metre above ground and its height at just over 30 metres, among the largest measured trees anywhere in the park's arboretum, with a deeply fluted, buttressed trunk in excellent health. No source gives it a specific planting date, so its age is estimated here from the park's own founding in the 1850s rather than documented directly, but a tree of this size, in a species not known for exceptionally fast growth, is a serious candidate for one of the arboretum's oldest original plantings.