Tuesday, July 3, 2018

  Largest (Oldest?) Cypress in Orleans Parish Discovered in City Park


We have discovered (thanks to a tip from Wesley Martin--thanks Wesley!)     another cypress treasure hiding in plain sight-- this one in City Park in New Orleans, behind the "Grow-Dat" Farm (see map below) . This is an impressive old cypress with thick limbs, a full canopy and a circumference measured at 11 feet 11 inches, the largest known cypress we have found in Orleans parish.  Its impressive girth, along with its location along one of the City Park bayous in a grove of other large old cypress, suggest that it could be "alive in 1803" and eligible for addition to the LPCL registry. We are awaiting permission to take a boring of the tree to determine its age. In the meantime, if you are aware of any similarly/larger sized cypress in Orleans Parish (circumference measured above the buttress where the trunk becomes uniform in size), please let us know!