Cultural Landscape Foundation features Le Blanc Tract in Iberville Parish-- old growth cypress threatened by new Mississippi Bridge ( October 2023) : https://www.tclf.org/plaquemine-point-faces-imminent-threat
Heart of Louisiana: Legacy Cypress
Tuesday, August 22nd 2017, 8:57 pm CDT
Cypress Avenue
Bayou Bridge Pipeline Faces Mounting Legal Challenges in Louisiana-- Old growth cypress at risk
By Jonathan Olivier / Staff Writer metadata
Posted Jan 10, 2015 at 9:00 PM
A cruise down any bayous of south Louisiana would once reveal vast labyrinths of bald cypress towering over the wetlands.
A cruise down any bayous of south Louisiana would once reveal vast labyrinths of bald cypress towering over the wetlands.
Trees as wide as cars and standing hundreds of years before Columbus made his voyage across the Atlantic dotted the landscape, as common as buildings and highways today.
Now, what’s been left are mostly young, thin cypress clinging to life after decades of logging, hurricanes and salt water intrusion along the coast. Even trees farther inland face being cut down due to urban sprawl.
It’s estimated there was once more than 2 million acres of cypress-tupelo swamps in Louisiana, and after significant logging in the 18th and 19th centuries virtually all of the virgin cypress forests disappeared. Only around 800,000 acres have grown back over the years, according to the Atchafalaya Basin Keeper, an environmental organization.
Spotting an old-growth cypress, older than around 200 years, is considered a rarity. So rare, in fact, that organizations are fighting to protect them.
“I’m particularly interested in trying to identify landmark trees on private property to try to promote the stewardship of these trees,” said Harvey Stern, of New Orleans.
Stern is the coordinator of a nonprofit, aimed at identifying old-growth cypress, called the Louisiana Purchase Cypress Legacy. Stern travels around the state to take core samples to age and identify cypress worthy of protection, recognizing those of significant size and age.
”(The organization) was set up as a way to commemorate cypress alive at the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803,” Stern said.
A well-known tree in West Feliciana Parish on Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, known as the National Champion, is estimated at 500 years or older. It’s the largest — 17 feet wide — of any tree species east of California. But Stern said he’s found some estimated at around 1,000 years old in the state.
Stern has analyzed old-growth trees stretching all over Louisiana, except in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Stern said he hasn’t documented or received any calls about old-growth cypress in the two parishes.
Whether it is a lack of large cypress or landowners with old growth trees unaware of Stern’s program in the area, driving down the many finger-like communities of the two parishes offers a picture as to perhaps why there’s been none reported.
Follow Wendy Billiot, of Theriot, as she pilots her boat through marsh in central and southern Terrebonne Parish.
While guiding wetland tours or fishing, there’s a good chance throughout her day on the bayou she’ll come across stands of gray remnants of cypress among the marsh. The dead trees are common throughout both parishes, and their losses continue to mount.
The trees died mostly from saltwater intrusion, Billiot said. As the coast continues to erode, saltwater continues its march north and the cypress trees are in the line of fire.
“They’re very hard to regenerate,” she said. “It’s not a matter of flushing freshwater through them, but a matter of them being in a location where salinity is below so many parts per thousand. In other words, they can’t take any salt water; they are not salt tolerant.“
Though large, old-growth cypress are beautiful sights, even the younger versions can be beneficial to ecosystems.
“It’s a tree that’s rooted. It holds soil together,” said Barton Joffrion with the LSU AgCenter in Houma. “When you lost trees of that magnitude, you’ve lost part of the ecosystem.“
Joffrion said cypress offer soil stability, something desperately needed when land erodes with such ease along the coast. But the trees also provide protection from hurricanes, acting as a buffer when storms threaten coastal communities.
From her own observations, Billiot said she has noticed the durability of cypress in the marsh, noting their superior ability to survive hurricanes when other trees snap.
“I have noticed that cypress knees are a heavy-duty anchoring system,” she said. “They are able to withstand hurricanes because of that system. They sway and bend and don’t’ snap. I think that’s very interesting; they are so suited to their habitat.“
While the losses of the trees have been significant, there are areas left in the central and southern parts of Terrebonne where cypress still thrive, Billiot said. She often rides past areas with towering cypress, alive and well, on her way to fishing grounds near Lake De Cade, west of Dulac.
The salt water hasn’t penetrated the area and enough freshwater exists to keep the trees thriving. The scene, Billiot said, is beautiful.
But those scenes are continuing to disappear, with trees enduring a slow, inevitable demise. Billiot carries a realistic approach with her and she questions how long the trees will continue to live in an area surrounded by salt water intrusion.
“As the saltwater line moves northward, you can expect those cypress trees to die ... and salinity increases,” she said.
Large-scale projects to increase freshwater flow, such as the Houma Navigation Canal lock complex, proposed to be built near the Bubba Dove floodgate near Dulac, will work to give a fighting chance to the marsh where Billiot lives and works. But many of the state’s restoration projects to enhance fresh water flow could take years, time some cypress forests just don’t have.
Joffrion said regenerating cypress in areas that have been heavily inundated with salt water will be a difficult, if almost impossible task.
“It’s going to be tough to (grow) trees back in those areas,” he said. “Over the many of years, we had areas in lower parts of the parishes that had nice, beautiful cypress trees. Through the forces of nature that has changed.”
Staff Writer Jonathan Olivier can be reached at 857-2204 or jonathan.olivier@houmatoday.com
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/state’s-cypress-trees-are-threatened-which-threatens-flood-protection/
State’s cypress trees are threatened which threatens flood protection
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/state’s-cypress-trees-are-threatened-which-threatens-flood-protection/
*****
The Sierra Club's Delta Chapter featured LPCL coring an East Baton Rouge Parish cypress in its 2009 newsletter. Read or download the article here. It's on pg. 12.
*****
Wal-Mart has agreed to stop selling Louisiana cypress mulch, but much more needs to be done to protect the state's iconic tree.
From the 10-23-07 issue of New Orleans' Gambit Weekly newspaper. https://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/much-ado-about-mulch/Content?oid=1248580*****
Louisiana Environmentalist Magazine cover story on Cypress Swamps in the Mississippi Valley
Come on a brief voyage of discovery into Louisiana's environmental history. Begin a search through our rich legacy for clues to the past and lessons for the future.In this retrospective adventure, we'll view Louisiana through some of the accounts of the early explorers. The Louisiana they saw teemed with wildlife -- parakeets, bison, bears, and waterfowl. It contained impenetrable cypress swamps, dense canebrakes, vast park-like forests of longleaf pine, majestic oak cheniers, endless trembling marshes, and sweeping prairies aflame with wildflowers.
» More
*****
FAMILY TREE: Beloved cypress given honor
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA)
FAMILY
TREE
Beloved
cypress given honor
Volunteers
hunting 200-year-old trees
Lynne
Jensen
Staff
writer
Published:
August 20, 2003
The big
baldcypress tree in front of Leona Epstein’s Uptown home was marked with a
plaque Tuesday because of its historic importance. But it was the mighty
presence of the tree that beckoned Epstein in 1959. So taken with the towering
cypress was Epstein that she and her husband, Arthur, bought the two-story
house it shades at 1664 Robert St. and raised four children there.
"I
feel I’m in a treehouse," Epstein said, stepping from her second-floor
bedroom onto a porch little more than an arm’s length away from the tree, which
measures about 13 feet in circumference. Staring up at the tree from the front
lawn were family, neighbors and friends, who gathered for the ceremony marking
the cypress as a Louisiana Purchase "Founder’s Tree."
The old
tree was alive when renowned pirate Jean Lafitte "was burying his
loot," said Harvey Stern, who presented the Epsteins with their Founder’s
Tree plaque.
Stern,
coordinator of the Louisiana Purchase Cypress Legacy campaign, hopes to
identify every baldcypress in Louisiana that is at least 200 years old -- alive
at the time of the Louisiana Purchase -- and to ensure that the trees
"will grow and prosper without man-made interference" by placing them
on a registry of "Louisiana Purchase Trees."
Organizations
such as the Sierra Club, the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation and Jean
Lafitte National Park are endorsing the volunteer campaign in recognition of
this year’s bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase.
This year
marks the 40th anniversary of the designation of the baldcypress as the state
tree. The Legislature declared August "Louisiana Purchase Cypress
Legacy Month."
The
legacy campaign is a treasure hunt for the old trees, which are "as
valuable as gold or silver," Stern said.
A
Founder’s Tree plaque also was presented Tuesday to Johnny and Mamie Sargent
Majoria, who have documented more than a dozen baldcypress trees measuring more
than 13 feet in circumference on their 800-acre home site in Harrisonburg.
"The
biggest is 23 feet" around, Johnny Majoria said.
The
cypress-filled property has been in his wife’s family since 1812, Majoria said.
The trees survived the 20th century because his father-in-law, Roy Sargent, who
died four years ago at 84, turned a deaf ear to money-waving lumber companies,
he said.
"We
all have a moral obligation to keep them," Majoria said of the baldcypress
trees.
A third
plaque was presented to Virginia Rettig, director of the Cat Island National
Wildlife Refuge near St. Francisville, home of a baldcypress that is 54 feet in
circumference and believed to be between 800 to 1,500 years old.
The Cat
Island tree is the largest virgin baldcypress on the planet and the largest
tree of any species east of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, dwarfed
in North America only by the giant redwoods and sequoias on the Sierra’s
western slope.
The Cat
Island tree is the sixth largest tree in the United States and the centerpiece
of the 6,500-acre wildlife refuge, Rettig said. "It’s a national treasure
right here in Louisiana," she said.
Epstein
said the cypress that stands like a giant sentry in front of her home is
"a valuable part of our family."
When she
bought her house more than 40 years ago, a contractor said the huge tree was
too close to the house and should be cut down, Epstein said. "I said, ‘No,
the house is too close to the tree,’ " she said. "The house was
incidental."
*****
Cypress Dating Boring Process
LILLIPUTIAN
Stern twists the coring tool while Ed Carroll watches the process,
hoping his tree will be a Louisiana Purchase Tree. The tree actually predated
the purchase by at least 600 years.
BY ANDI COOK
THE DAILY NEWS
VARNADO n The
cypress king of Pigott's Swamp featured in a November issue of the Daily News
is now known to be approximately 800 years old. Three core samples taken from
the tree were examined and the rings counted. The age of 800 years is a
"conservative estimate" made by Harvey Stern, coordinator for the
Louisiana Purchase Cypress Legacy, an organization dedicated to finding cypress
trees that are at least as old as the Louisiana Purchase.
After the November
article was written about the tree, which is on land near Varnado owned by Ed
Carroll, the existence of the tree was passed by word of mouth to Stern. When
Stern heard about a cypress tree that measured 19 feet in circumference at the
level of six feet from the ground, he was quite excited.
He has been dating
trees for some time and knew that most cypress trees that are 12 inches or
larger in breast-height circumference are at least 200 years old and therefore
as old as the Louisiana Purchase. While the circumference of a tree hundreds of
years old varies depending on its location, access to nutrients and other
ecological variables, Stern expected Carroll's tree to be at least as old as
the Louisiana Purchase.
After contacting Carroll, Stern made a trip to
Washington Parish to take a core sample from the cypress. He checked Carroll's
measurement and found the tree to be 18 feet 9 inches in circumference at
breast height, about five feet from the ground. Using a small tool that can
extract a 14-inch sample, he bored a hole in the tree and removed a sample so
he could count the rings of the tree.
Because the cypress was hollow in the
middle and a 14-inch core was difficult to obtain, Stern took three samples for
examination. When asked if coring could potentially expose the tree to disease
or insect infestation and kill the tree, he said it was very unlikely.
"When a tree is
75 years old or older," he explained, "they build up a resistance to
insects and disease."
After a sample is dried and sanded, the tree is
dated by counting the rings under a microscope, determining what length of the
radius the sample represents, and then extrapolating the probable age of the
tree. Stern counted 48 rings on one sample, 75 rings on another and 80 rings on
the third. He averaged the tree ring count and multiplied by the fraction of
the radius the length represented to arrive at the age of 800 years.
Stern
said this is a conservative estimate and the tree could be as old as 1000 years
of age. Dendrochronologist Margaret Devall has documented several trees in the
Pearl River Basin at around 1000 years of age. Stern himself is an amateur and
he sometimes has his counts corroborated by Devall. Since the rings on
Carroll's tree were quite clear, he has no plans for corroboration this
time.
"The rings on Ed's tree are remarkably visible," he said;
"little sanding was required. I counted the rings under a microscope at
the UNO Biology lab and do not plan to get the count corroborated because they
are so clear."
While much of the old growth cypress in Louisiana was
logged years ago, Stern has documented a number of large old cypress trees as
Louisiana Purchase Trees. The largest bald cypress in the U.S. is located in
Louisiana on Cat Island, which is owned by the Louisiana Nature Conservancy. It
measures 53 feet in circumference at breast height.
Carroll's tree is the
first tree Stern took a core sample of in Washington Parish. He has found
several cypress trees in the vicinity of Poole's Bluff that are probably 200
years old or older.
Stern obtained several grants to aid him in his quest to
document Louisiana Purchase cypress trees. He felt 2003 was a good year to
begin the project since it was the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase
and the 40th anniversary of the naming of the bald cypress as the official
state tree.
He hopes the Louisiana Purchase Cypress Legacy will help people be
more conscious of tree age and the need to preserve Louisiana's ecological
heritage. The owner of each tree documented as a Louisiana Purchase Tree
receives a plaque attesting to the tree's age.
HISTORIC TIMELINE:
If the cypress tree proved to be 1000 years old, it would have been a seedling when in 1000 AD when Leif Eriksson, Viking explorer, discovered North America.
If the tree
is only 800 years old, it would have sprouted about the time the Magna Carta
was signed by King John of England, restricting the power of the monarchy,
particularly in matters of taxation.
Without the
Magna Carta,the issue of taxation without representation would never have been
raised in the New World and the American Revolution may have never occurred.
Historic happenings during
life of cypress
First 200 years:
*Middle
ages at their height
*Magna
Carta signed in England
Second 200 years:
*Reformation
began
*Columbus
discovered America
*Hernando
de Soto claimed territory for Spain
*French
trappers explored northern Mississippi
Third 200 years:
*Robert
Cavalier descended Mississippi; claimed territory for *Louis XIV for France
*New
Orleans founded
*Acadians
arrived in Louisiana
*American
Revolution
*U.S.
Constitution formed
Fourth 200 years:
*Louisiana
became a state
*Battle of
New Orleans
*Louisiana
secedes from union
*Civil
War
*Great
Southern Lumber Company formed
*Bogalusa
incorporated
