Hunting big cypress in Mississippi

Saturday morning I drove (by myself--Hope had a baby shower to go to, and the kids were watched by their favorite babysitter) to a small town in central Mississippi called Belzoni approximately 2 hours from Monticello. I was to meet up with another guy (Gary Smith) and we were going to look for some big trees we've heard about in this area.

Even though there was a chance of rain, the day turned out to be warm, sunny, and dry--not exactly what the farmers in drought-stricken Mississippi wanted to see, but a fine day for hunting for big trees. We got in Gary's truck and cruised the back roads to find the first tree of the day--the national co-champion baldcypress. As we traveled down the dust farm roads, I realized that many of you probably have never seen cotton in the fields, so here's a good picture:

The cotton bolls are just starting to become obvious--you can see a few round white puffs in these plants--those are the bolls. Cotton does better than corn and other crops in dry weather, in part because of its nature--it was originally a hot tropical species. Watermelon is another species that is from hot, dry parts of Africa, probably explaining why we could never grow them well in northern Wisconsin.

Just down the road from the field of cotton, we found the small woodlot that contained the champion cypress. After a little searching, we finally found the right path to the tree, and a few minutes later, we spotted along the banks of an old slough (the former bed of a sluggish stream or bayou flowing through the area). This picture shows why the tree is a champion--its base is really wide, making it's stem diameter where it is conventionally measured (4.5 feet above the ground) quite large. The tree overall is not very big, nor old, I suspect. To me, it looks to be a sapling or a sprout that got started on an old big cypress stump, and has covered it over during the years. Cypress will have large, swollen bases (called "buttresses"), but this is extreme, even for this species.

We then traveled to another location perhaps 10 or 20 miles away. This area is part of a new wildlife management area owned by the state of Mississippi called Sky Lake. It was recently purchased from a private landowner, and is part of an old "oxbow" lake (another old river or bayou feature) that has some significant baldcypress. We parked his truck by an old cemetery and walked down from the higher adjacent fields to the swamp at the bottom. The big old cypress trees were apparent from the high ground, as they towered above the forest beneath them. Unfortunately, the site was still boggy enough to limit our travel. We were swarmed by clouds of mosquitoes, and saw a cottonmouth slither between us, but didn't get to see many of the big cypress.

This tree was the only one we measured--the picture doesn't do it justice, but it is over 10 feet in diameter! The smaller tree in front of it is a water locust, and if you look carefully, you can see the large spines that armor this species. We didn't get to see the biggest of the trees out here--some are 13 to 15 feet in diameter. Unlike the first tree we looked at, these are definitely ancient individuals, easily 500+ years old for the bigger ones, and some may even approach or exceed 1,000 years old! We plan to return later this fall or during the winter when the conditions are better. If the water is high, we'll take our canoe.

We then traveled to the nearby Delta National Forest and found the Sweetgum Research Natural Area, which was set-aside to preserve some of the last virgin bottomland hardwoods in this area, especially some big sweetgums. Unfortunately, over the last few years, a number of these trees have died, and the stand is a shadow of its former self. We did measure one sweetgum that was at least 138 feet tall and over 4 feet in diameter.

On my way home, I was just leaving the Delta National Forest when a large woodpecker with a bright red crest flew across the road immediately in front of me. My heart pounded with the possibility of an ivory-bill sighting, but this was not the case--the dark feathers on its back told me it was just a pileated woodpecker. Still, a very lovely bird.