The Specimen Bald Cypress of Arsenal Park

Arsenal Park holds two of Pittsburgh's Remarkable Trees about twenty metres apart, and this bald cypress is the one that was not chosen for size. When the city's Shade Tree Commission listed it in March 2023, it went in as a Specimen Tree: a notable example of its kind on public property, which is a different honour from being the biggest. Its neighbour, a hornbeam, took the commission's Pittsburgh Champion title in the same round. The ground is older than anything recorded about the tree. The park opened on 4 July 1907 on land that had been the Allegheny Arsenal. Nobody has written down when this cypress was planted, so the park's date says nothing about the tree's. What the tree does announce, every year, is that it is a long way from home. Bald cypress is a conifer of southern swamps and river bottoms, at ease in standing water, and here it grows a few steps from the 40th Street entrance in Lawrenceville. It is also one of the few conifers that drops every needle. In autumn the feathery foliage turns rust and falls, and through the winter it stands as a bare, tapering spire, a conifer with nothing on it at all. No age, girth or height has been published. If you know when it went in, or you have put a tape round it, tell us.