National Co-Champion Cypress.  
Note the "stump" underneath the root mass.

The champion cypress was easy to spot--having seen pictures of this
tree, we kind of knew what to expect... The tree makes their list as
co-champ because of a incredibly wide (even for baldcypress)
buttress--so much so, that I didn't even make an attempt at measuring
diameter. After this initial swell, which drops drastically at about 5
feet above the ground, the cypress proves to be of very modest size. It
reaches about 86 feet tall, but it has all the appearances of a young
tree (young, of course, being relative for cypress, which can live to
well over 1,000 years). To me, it seems that this cypress may have
gotten its start on the stump of an old dead cypress, and then was able
to cover it over with its own root system. I have definitely seen many
more impressive cypress than this tree, which was interesting to see,
but not massive at all.

Sky Lake Slough: 
the water visible is not actually part of Sky Lake itself, but some catfish 
rearing ponds located nearby--this image looks back towards a slough 
draining into Sky Lake.


We then traveled northwest of this site to Sky Lake Wildlife Management
Area in northern Humphreys County. We had heard good things about this
site--all true, by the way, unless the clouds of mosquitoes or
occasional cottonmouth are considered bad... Sky Lake WMA is a recently
protected area that is chock-full of giant and ancient baldcypress
(http://www.wildlifemiss.org/news/news/2001/05-16.html). We parked at
an old cemetery next to the WMA, from which the big cypress could be
seen towering over a low understory of water locust and what I think was
water-elm. We skirted the edge of the cemetery and some cropland before
dropping down off of the higher terrace into a wooded slough choked with
mosquitoes. This site was still fairly wet, even with the major drought
Mississippi is experiencing, so we slogged along as best we could,
regretting with every step that we left our boots behind.

Sky Lake Cemetary

Large baldcypress boles soon started appearing amongst the low tangle of
hardwoods. We came across a number of nice-sized cypress, almost all of
them more massive than the co-champ we had seen earlier in the day.
Most were draped with Spanish moss, and it was obvious that they were
ancient. We stopped to measure only one cypress--it turned out to be
32.8 feet in circumference (I couldn't get a height on it due to the
conditions, but it probably wasn't much more than 80 or 90 feet tall).
This tree was huge and well worth the journey, but we weren't able to
find the real bigguns lurking in this swamp--there are at least a few
out here that go over 40 feet in circumference!! We vowed to return
later this year, when conditions are better, and we're better equipped.
After returning to the truck, we then drove around to several other
vantages points of Sky Lake and its associated sloughs. From several
points we could see large cypress standing out above the rest of the
trees--a sure sign of more big cypress reports to come!

We then headed over to the Delta National Forest, which lies southwest
of Belzoni. North of the small town of Holly Bluff, we crossed the
parched yet rich farmlands of the Mississippi River Delta to get to the
Sweetgum Research Natural Area. This is a small tract of timber that
had been spared from the logging of these bottomland hardwoods.
Historically, it had been dominated by large sweetgum, but unfortunately
many of these have died in recent decades. The stand still has a
scattering of large, old sweetgum, including one we measured to be 49.1
inches at DBH and at least 138 feet tall. Most of the rest of the
canopy oaks and gums aren't this tall--perhaps between 100 and 120 feet.
Still, the stand had a unique feel about it, with its cane and palmetto
dominated understory growing up out of the clayey, wet soil.

Large Sweetgum and Gary Smith

After a quick walk through the Sweetgum RNA, Gary and I discussed future
plans to return to the Sky Lake WMA, and then parted ways. As I reached
the northern end of the Delta National Forest, a large woodpecker with a
prominent red crest darted from the big timber on one side of the road
to the other. My pulse quickened as my brain raced through woodpecker
characteristics... But alas, this was no ivory-bill, as its dark
plumage on its back showed--a male pileated woodpecker. Still, an
exciting way to conclude the day!

I'll send Ed some pictures from this adventure.

Don

****************************
Don Bragg, Ph.D.
Research forester
Editor, Bulletin of the ENTS
****************************