CONSIDER THE CYPRESS KNEES
by Julie Lavender
Recent hikes led my husband and me past waterlogged, large-bottomed Cypress trees. “Buttressed bases,” my resident biologist corrected.
I
chuckled at his loving, yet scientific-scolding.
Way
more fascinating to me are the Cypress knees that surround most Cypress trees.
Wooden, knobby stalagmites. Sometimes short and stumbling-worthy; sometimes
knee-height and a bit more obvious.
Almost no other tree has knees, not in this fashion. Some have roots that loop and grow in odd shapes, but rarely do other trees have roots that shoot up and grow at right-angles to the underground, horizontal ones.
Cypress
trees grow near ponds and in swamps and bottomlands. They can withstand
flooding and strong winds and scientist have decided they’re vital to the
ecosystem, preventing erosion where they stand guard like sentinels and harboring
much wildlife, even some endangered and threatened species.
