Identification. (See under Nyssa sylvatica)
In winter, specimens from the tree at White Knights showed the following characters:—Twigs stout, pubescent near the tip, glabrescent elsewhere. Leaf-scars slightly oblique on prominent pulvini, almost orbicular or obcordate, notched in the upper margin, surrounded by a slightly raised rim, and marked by three conspicuous bundle-dots. Lateral buds minute, globose, two-scaled, reddish, shining, glabrous, arising in the notch of the leaf-scar. Terminal buds nearly globose, short and broad, with four to five thick, pubescent, reddish scales, keeled on the back and apiculate at the apex; in December the three outermost scales had dropped the apiculus and showed a truncate apex with a terminal scar. The base of the shoot is marked by ring-like scars as in Nyssa sylvatica.
Distribution
Nyssa aquatica is found growing in swamps throughout the coast region of the United States, from Southern Virginia to Texas, and in the Mississippi valley, in Arkansas, Southern and South-Eastern Missouri, Western Kentucky, and Tennessee, and in the valley of the lower Wabash River in Illinois.
An interesting account of the peculiar habit of this tree, as observed in the swamps of Arkansas, is given by Coulter.[1] Occurring in company with Taxodium distichum, wherever the ground is inundated with water, the trunk develops an enlarged, dome-like base, often of immense size. A tree only 45 feet high, of which a figure is given, had a swollen base 55 feet in girth at the point where the roots entered the ground. When the water-supply is scanty the base is only slightly enlarged; and trees growing in dry soil show no swelling of the trunk. Coulter saw numerous seedlings of Nyssa, and concludes that it is gradually ousting from the swamps the Deciduous Cypress, which rarely seeds itself. Wilson[2] states that around the swollen base of these trees in the swamps there are masses of roots extending 6 to 8 inches above high-water line, each root going vertically up out of the water, and after a sharp bend going down into the water again. He compares these roots, rising above the water for purposes of aeration, with the knees of Taxodium.
Cultivation
Nyssa aquatica was cultivated[3] by Collinson near London in 1735. It is now scarcely known in cultivation in England, the only tree which we have found beingone at White Knights Park, Reading, the residence of T. Friedlander, Esq. It is a slender tree, about 36 feet by 2 feet 2 inches, which looks of considerable age and is not vigorous in growth. Loudon[4] states that most of the trees which he saw at White Knights in 1833 were planted between 1790 and 1810; and one was a fine specimen[5] of Nyssa aquatica, perhaps identical with the tree now living.
