Seville built a monument to its most famous Romantic poet around a tree that had nothing to do with him.
Photo: CarlosVdeHabsburgo (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Bald Cypress
Taxodium distichum
Bald cypress grows with its feet in standing water in the swamps of the American South, pushing woody knees up out of the mud around its trunk, and it is a conifer that drops its needles every autumn. We map 27 of them, in 24 cities.
At home it lives for centuries. Old Baldy, on Onion Creek in Austin, was already old when Father Antonio Olivares wrote about it in 1716, and Texas puts it past five hundred years. Abroad, nineteenth century gardeners wanted the shape and took the swamp tree without the swamp. Berlin's has stood for two centuries in the Charlottenburg palace garden. Seville built its monument to the poet Becquer around one that was growing on the spot first. Miyazaki Shrine holds the largest in Japan, and Milan's was filed under the wrong genus for years until somebody checked properly.
Seville
This bald cypress runs 35.7 metres tall, the tallest deciduous conifer in Seville's own survey of its singular trees, with a crown spreading 23.3 metres over the Isla de los Patos, the duck island...
Milan
Autumn colour
For years, gardeners in Porta Venezia's park called this tree a metasequoia and had the genus wrong before anyone checked properly.
Dublin
A tree built for Louisiana swampland grows in a Dublin botanic garden, and it still remembers where it came from.
Berlin
A swamp tree from the American South has spent two centuries in a Prussian palace garden.
Photo: Fridolin freudenfett (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Autumn colour
This is a conifer that goes bare every winter.
Leipzig
Autumn colour
A bald cypress on a Leipzig pavement is a long way from home.
Photo: Edlerin (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Lyon
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.
Lucca
Autumn colour
Two bald cypresses stand fifteen metres apart at the pond in Lucca's botanical garden, buttressed at the base and throwing up the woody knees that let the species breathe in waterlogged ground, a t...
The Hague
This bald cypress grows on a lawn in the garden behind Paleis Noordeinde, the working palace where the King of the Netherlands keeps his office, on ground first laid out as a private garden in the...
Madrid
Several bald cypresses grow directly out of the pond in front of the Palacio de Cristal, their trunks and lower roots permanently submerged, a planting scheme that only works because this particula...
Photo: EnriqueSN (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Bilbao
A tree from the swamps of the American south stands at the front door of a Basque university, looking across the river at the Guggenheim.
Geneva
Geneva's own lakeside walking guide files this tree under arbres insolites, unusual trees, and it earns the label every November by doing what no conifer is supposed to do.
Delft
A swamp tree from the American South outlived the psychiatric hospital that once surrounded it.
Amersfoort
The oldest tree in this garden is no longer in it.
Haarlem
Six bald cypresses grow together on the lowest, wettest ground in Kenaupark, and that placement is not an accident.
Zwolle
Huis de Paddestoel means Toadstool House, and the bald cypress carrying its name stands where the paperwork about it does not quite agree with itself.
Miyazaki
This is the largest bald cypress in Japan, and it is a stranger here.
Assen
Autumn colour
This one is included for what it might become rather than what it is.
Austin
Father Antonio Olivares, the Franciscan who later founded San Antonio, wrote about this cypress in 1716.
Photo: Larry D. Moore (CC BY 4.0)
Bergamo
Autumn colour
These two are American swamp trees, and they have been standing in a walled Bergamo garden for more than two centuries.
Heidelberg
A tree from the swamps of the American southeast has been protected on a Heidelberg riverside road since 28 July 1942.
Modena
Five swamp trees from the American southeast are standing 30 metres over a Modena suburb.
Woody spikes up to two metres tall are coming out of the ground around this tree.
Pittsburgh
Autumn colour
Bald cypress is a swamp tree.
San Antonio
By local tradition, the shot that killed Ben Milam came out of this tree.
Stuttgart
Three swamp trees from the American south, standing in a German spa park, protected by law for being unusual.
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