Plants in Israel | Taxodium distichum

Taxodium distichum, Bald cypress, Swamp cypress,
تاكسوديم ,טקסודיון דו-טורי

Pictures taken during ‘Tour guide in-service training’ at Weizman Insitute, Rehovot, an institution of scientific learning with the most beautiful campus. The site is landscaped with interesting and unusual vegetation, green lawns, bushes, trees and foothpaths shaded by trees from all parts of the globe, and the Taxodium distichum, Bald cypress, Swamp cypress, is one of them.
Scientific name:   Taxodium distichum (L.) Rich.
Common name:   Bald cypress, Swamp cypress
Hebrew name:   טקסודיון דו-טורי
Arabic name:   تاكسوديم
Family:   Taxodiaceae, Bald Cypress or Taxodium Family, טקסודיים


Life form:   Deciduous conifer
Stems:   25–40 m tall, single, erect trunk, lateral branche; bark, gray-brown to red-brown, vertically fibrous and fissured
Leaves:   Alternate, simple, entire, linear, lanceolate; spirally arranged, doubly ranked along deciduous branchlets; branchlets themselves arranged in a mostly alternate – spiral fashion on the true woody stems
Inflorescence:   Dimorphic inflorescences; staminate cones numerous in a slender catkin-like panicle, carpellate cones few in a small terminal cluster
Flowers:   Monoecious; male catkins about 2 mm in diameter, slender, purplish, drooping clusters 7 to 13 cm long; female flowers are cones, singly or in clusters of two or three
Fruits / pods:   globe-shaped cone, 20−40 seeds per cone, green to brown
Flowering Period:   March, April
Native:   Swamps of the Southern US and Gulf of Mexico


Derivation of the botanical name:

Taxodium, taxus, yew; Greek eidos, resemblance; “resembling a Taxus”, referring to the appearance of the slightly flattened linear foliage of both genera.

distichum, distichus, διστιχοσ, in two rows; “two-ranked,” referring to the pectinate arrangement of leaves along the deciduous branchlets.

  • The standard author abbreviation L. is used to indicate Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778), a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, the father of modern taxonomy.
  • The standard author abbreviation Rich. is used to indicate Louis Claude Marie Richard (1754 – 1821), a French botanist and botanical illustrator.

Taxodium distichum develops characteristic ‘knees’ (pneumatophores) extending upwards from its submerged roots.
The first trees were planted in the early fifties in the Ilanot National Tree Arboretum (originally established in 1950) and the Botanical Garden “Mikveh-Israel” (established in 1930, in order to adapt and acclimate trees and species to the Israeli climate. Plants were imported from all over the world. It now covers now 70 dunams, 7 hectares.)