POP! PLUNK! SPLASH! Bald cypress tree cones explode, landing on the mossy ground or splashing into the water below. The cone releases seeds and a rainbow sheen of oil in cubist shapes. When disturbed, the oil slick shatters into smaller scales, a feature of a plant oil and not a petroleum slick.
Cypress oils are aromatic and medicinal, the wood resistant to rot and termites. This water tolerant deciduous conifer mitigates flood damage protecting from erosion and reducing land loss, allowing ‘floodwaters to spread out, slow down, and infiltrate the soil.
Cypress trees have been immortalized in mythology from the Greek Kyparissos who grieves in the form of a cypress after the death of a beloved, to the Persian demarkation of cypress as the tree of immortality. These trees stand as sentinels of time, as the river passes by.
Thank you Greg Gys for bringing this topic up for exploration.
OSFR President Joanne Tremblay
joanne.tremblay@oursantaferiver.org
“Giving Our River A Voice”
What. FABOLOUS POST! Thank you, Joanne!!
All these years I thought that was 2 stroke oil polluting the river.