Pictures taken 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 taxodion du-turi | |
Arabic name: | تاكسوديم | |
Family: | Taxodiaceae, Bald Cypress or Taxodium Family, טקסודיים |
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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 | |
Summer shedding: | Perennating |
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 Hebrew name: טקסודיון, taxodion, transliteration from the scientific name.
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.) |