Swamp Cypress Seed

The Swamp Cypress is an ideal conifer for wet soils. It is the dominant tree in the everglades of Florida and introduced to the UK in the mid 1600s. In the autumn, the soft leaflets fade to a beautiful bronze and then brown in autumn before dropping  – a rare deciduous conifer.  This tree is easy to confuse with Metasequoia(Dawn Redwood), but Taxodium has branches and leaflets arranged alternately, whereas Metasequoia has them arranged in pairs, opposite each other. The bark is stringy and shaggy and mature trees in wet areas grow ‘knees’ or odd bits of trunk erupting from the ground round the main trunk (pneumatophores). Despite its name, it doesn’t necessarily need to be planted in a wet place.