"...the way Spanish moss hung from my father's face..."

“I want to hang from a tree the way Spanish moss hung from my father's face, like the mustache he was so embarrassed he couldn't grow.”
― Jarod Kintz, There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't

The Florida swamps were full of the beautiful Southern icon, Spanish moss.  While we typically envision huge live oaks with the moss blowing the breeze on the grounds of plantation homes, the moss also inhabits the cypress trees that make up the flora of the swamps. 

 

Our guide was very informative and knew a ton about the area because he was a native.  He told us all about the cypress trees.  Apparently, they are important to coastal areas because they protect from extreme coastal erosion and flooding that go along with hurricanes.  And see all those little 'knobby knees' of the trees - the spiky root-like smaller growths at the bottom?  The actual function of these is not known but it is thought that they may help to provide oxygen to the tree and to help anchor it in the muddy soil.  I remember seeing many of them at Theta Pond on the OSU campus. 

Fire plays a huge role in the cypress swamps.  It seems the cypress trees grow very quickly after a fire...much more quickly than any other type of tree.  Another interesting fact is the cypress wood itself.  It is resistant to rot and therefore used for woodworking.  Because of this people will scan the swamp bottoms for logs to be used to make furniture. 

 

The cypress trees are the oldest and tallest of the swamp trees, some of them 500 years old!  The line that delineates a darker bottom color from the lighter top color of the trees is the flood lines from previous years hurricane floods.  It helps ecologists determine the flood surges after the great storms.