This episode features the State Tree of Louisiana, the Bald Cypress. (Taxodium distichum). But the Bald Cypress in the plant story is not in the USA but in the Loire in France, in the grounds of a beautiful chateau.

How it got there is part of the story, a gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to the chateau owner, bought back from his last expedition to Louisiana in 1802!

So through a plant story about a Bald Cypress, we bring together two countries, and a moment in history in 1803, remembered by one nation, perhaps forgotten by the other as Napoleon sells Louisiana to the Americans.

You can see photographs of the tree and find links to the chateau on the Our Plant Stories website www.ourplantstories.com

Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy

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Welcome to Our Plant Stories.

The following week we pottered off to the Loire, which was where we happened to cross Les Grotteaux, the smallest of the greatest castles. Lovingly restored by its present owners as a hotel.

And we're standing in that park looking at the riverbank at the beginning of this episode because by chance, just a few days earlier, an enormous tree has fallen.

It fell at about 10 past 6, 10 or 15 minutes before there were a guided tour and they were just under the trees and there were no wind.

It just felt like that because it was very, very wet, a lot of rain and the water was very high and go under the roots and take off the ground, you know, and after it failed.

But it wasn't just any tree because Charles Joseph was employed in military subsistence and supplying the army with food meant he had a friendship with Napoleon Bonaparte who held him in high esteem. I hope you're beginning to see why I knew we had a plant story here.

My name is Gaёl du Halgouёt, the owner of the chateau.

Tell me what we're looking at.

This owner was called Charles Joseph Bagieu. Charles Joseph Bagieu was an important man for Napoleon Bonaparte.

He was in charge of feeding all the soldiers of the Napoleon Bonaparte army, a huge army. And he was very, very close friend. And Charles Joseph Bagieu was very loyal during all the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, to the emperor.

So when he has made this huge English park in this little chateau, he asks Napoleon I to bring back from different expeditions new trees.

And it's important in France at this period, the very beginning of the 19th century, when you make an English park to have trees that nobody else have, you know, to be the first one in France. And this is the first bald cypress in France. So coming from Louisiana, it's an incredible tree.

The bald cypress is one of the exceptions because they lose completely their pins in winter. That's the name, bald cypress. And before losing their pins, they get incredible color. We consider it as one of the most nicest trees of autumn.

It goes from green to yellow, from yellow to red, from red to brown. When it's completely brown, everything falls. And whatever the period is, it's always a very, very, very nice tree.

This tree in Louisiana has a very, very, very long life. We know that some trees are hundred and hundred and hundred years old.

And here it's different because it's not the same climate. So we don't know without this problem with the river and the rain how long it would have been alive.

You know, how long it would have been but 220 years. So it's a pity and we are very sad to see this tree now down.

The second particularity of these trees is normally they are growing in the water completely and they are growing in the water in lake or river and suddenly the roots are growing completely vertically. The American call them knees, until they get oxygen out of the water. It's very, very unusual to see all these knees all around these trees.

It's really a very, very nice, very nice tree.

Tell me how it fell. Did you see it fall? What happened?

I didn't see. I wasn't there at this moment. But from March until June we had a lot of, a lot of, a lot of rain.

The river was always very, very high and with the water going very quick and this take off a lot of ground around the tree which was bending a little bit and very, very big. And one day, unfortunately, ten past six, the tree fell.

What did you feel when you saw it?

Very, very, very sad. It was one of the nicest trees of the park. And for all the visitors, it's a very important tree, especially for the Americans.

So this tree is a very strong symbol for them. When they visited this chateau, so they were all taking photo. We are very sad now to see it down.

And with this trees down, we cannot see the Eiffel Bridge behind. So it's impossible to let it like that, even if it seems that it's still alive because it's still green. But it's impossible to let it.

We'd have to cut it during the winter period and burn it. Unfortunately.

Yes, Gael did say the Eiffel Bridge made by Gustav Eiffel. Apparently There are only 3, in the grounds of French chateaux, and this is one of them. Gael was recorded on my phone.

And sometimes stories take a little while before they find their way to here.

But armed with the knowledge that the bald cypress is the state tree for Louisiana, let me introduce you and Gael to Harvey Stern, who is the founder of the Louisiana Purchase Cypress legacy. Yes. Hello, Harvey. Bonjour. When I visited your chateau or stayed at your wonderful chateau in the Loire, it was about three weeks earlier that. The bald cypress had fallen.

It was obscuring the view of the very, very beautiful Eiffel Bridge that you have. And you said, we're going to have to clear that over the winter. So did you clear it? Is it now?

I'm working right now on it. Yeah. Yeah, this morning. But it's a job for work for about two weeks. Yeah.

So, Harvey, you're in Louisiana, you're in New Orleans. Tell us your connection to the bald cypress.

And that's where I first encountered the cypress. This is going back 40 again, 45 years ago. And it occurred to me that, you know, a lot of these cypress still left look pretty old.

And it's kind of neat to just kind of go out and not just canoe, but to kind of discover these. These old cypress that are sometimes kind of, I call them hiding in plain sight. They're really treasures hiding in plain sight.

So that's how it all started.

Yeah, that's a really interesting connection. And it's really, for the first time, you made the direct connection between.

And by that time I had found many more old trees throughout, not just the New Orleans area, but throughout Louisiana. And it occurred to me that people knew about these old trees, but they didn't know how old they are for the most part.

So I thought, wouldn't it be neat to be able to start taking borings from these trees and to find out how old they were, just so folks would get an idea how really old these trees were?

And how is the Louisiana Purchase seen from a French perspective now?

Most of the French people are forgotten all of this period, unfortunately. And when our American friends come at the chateau, it's completely different because it's an important part of the American history.

Though they were all going for a photo just under the bald cypress. Yeah. Because it's a strong symbol, you know.

And I know history is one of your things because you gave us a fantastic historical tour of the chateau. So if people did want to know about it from the French perspective, just outline for us what happens. Why does Napoleon sell it?

The first reason is think that this huge territory will be very difficult to manage.

So far From France.

The second reason that they think that selling to our American friends this huge country so that they can have these beautiful and big countries, the French influence will be higher than the English one. And you know, that the English were the enemy of Napoleon. I don't know if it is a success, but that it was thinking.

So realistically, it was just. It was too far away. It wasn't going to be possible to keep control of.

Basically, we also need a little money to make some wars in Europe also.

But is that correct in the size, what it does to the size as well, Harvey, it doubles virtually the size of America.

Louisiana purchased roughly double the size. It's significant for that reason alone. And the politics behind it are pretty intriguing. But it was, yeah, if it weren't for Napoleon, I don't think that the purchase would have taken place. Right.

Gael, from what I understand, you know, he was instrumental in bringing it about. And if it weren't for Napoleon, westward expansion in the United States would not have happened.

And by the way, it's, you know, Cypress, and it gets into the whole ecological value of Cypress. You know, they certainly, certainly don't stop at the Louisiana state line. They go up into Arkansas.

They go up much farther than people, actually, bald cypress go up as far as New Jersey, as far as their location.

How had they survived? Because what were people in New Orleans using these trees for Harvey?

Yeah, people.

Not only the people in New Orleans, but going back to the Cajuns in central Louisiana and the Native Americans, the Chitimacha and the Tunica and the Houma Indians throughout the state of Louisiana were using the cypress for sustenance. They were using because they grow in water. They make great pirogues. You know, they're used to the water and they make. They make, not only do they make great pirogues, but for the Cajuns and for the New Orleans, they're great for housing construction in the wet climate of New Orleans and south Louisiana, because just by nature, where they grow, they make great. They make great houses and pirogues and things that need to survive in hot, humid weather of Louisiana. What was that word you used again?

Pirogues? Is that they're French for. I think. I didn't know it yeah, it's a same word.

It's a small boat that is used by the Cajuns, by the Native Americans to go fishing and crawfishing and to get around from place to place in the swamps of Louisiana. Maybe a little bit off from my French pronunciation for it. Pirogue. Pirogue, yes. Yeah.

So the trees that you found had survived. Why, why had your ones not been, you know, taken down and used as housing?

I think for several reasons.

One of the chief reasons is that the trees that I'm finding that are several hundred years old were hollow at the time that logging really started taking off in central Louisiana in the mid to late 19th century.

The younger cypress, which were obviously much more valuable to the lumber companies than the hollow trees, which from which you couldn't get nearly as much lumber. So the cypress that I'm finding, even though the oldest ones are largely hollow, they still survive through their growth through the outside bark.

They don't need to be fully intact to continue thriving each spring.

I was out just yesterday in one of my favorite areas in, interestingly enough, called King George Bayou, which is probably an interesting story in itself and how it became King George Bayou. But finding we didn't quite get to the old cypress that I, that I landmarked there many years ago.

But that's a good example of a several hundred year old cypress that was hollow but still surviving and growing and growing to this day. And just inspirational to see.

Gael, have you ever been to Louisiana? Have you ever seen them growing? Have you got any questions for Harvey in that case?

Well, I understood that you were just speaking about Bald Cypress, age 700 years, but what did you find as the oldest one?

I'll go straight to the answer, and I'm saying I'm finding trees, well, well over a thousand years old. We're talking probably as old as the famed redwoods and sequoias in the western part of the United States that are such major Tourist attractions.

But in terms of giving you an exact age, I just have to say that I did not start this off. I'm not a scientist per se.

I'm just a fellow that loved the outdoors who has been involved with environmental issues through my job with the City Planning Commission in New Orleans. And I was a coastal cell manager. So I know about ecology.

But this effort is not to get the exact age of the trees, partly because, as I talked about earlier, these trees being hollow, it's very difficult to get a core that goes all the way into the heart of the tree. The tree is. Obviously, if it's hollow, I can usually only get a 5 or 6 inch core. But it's enough of a core.

And also the important thing to note is that if you've seen pictures of cypress, you know that they have the butt, we call them the buttress or the swelling at the bottom. And then they go straight up, the trunk goes straight up. So the trick is to get the circumference measured above the buttress.

It's from that trunk that we were able to get boring. And from that boring, we're able to get enough of a core usually to get an estimate.

But getting back, again, this is not a strictly scientific estimate.

And if I'm off by, you know, 50 or 100 years, in case of the older trees, so what, they're still, you know, maybe 700 years old instead of really 800 if you were to do a DNA analysis. But the effort is to show that we really have these old trees around and they're really worth revering and protecting and keeping the habitat alive. Do you think, Harvey, do you think that in the US you have some other tree as old as the bald cypress or it is the record life?

Well, yes, actually.

The tree experts, the arborists and the ecologists have documented there are trees called the bristlecone pine trees in California, which, again, kind of belie their appearance.

These are scraggy little trees, kind of look like, kind of like juniper trees in the rocks of California that are at least as old as the oldest cypress that I found. Which brings up another issue, is that the width and the height of the cypress belie the age.

I found cypress as small as 10 foot in circumference that are several hundred years old because they grow so slowly.

But as far as other trees, you have the bristlecone pine trees, the sequoias and the redwoods up in Northern California, up through Oregon into British Columbia, these trees, these are huge, beautiful old trees that are among major tourist attractions that grow easily as old as the cypress that I found.

A lot of the ecotourism groups now, at least there's two or three now I can think of that they paddle out or kayak out to a tree that I have a plaque up on.

And it's kind of the culmination of their tour to say, look, this tree has been plaqued and that it's been alive at least since the time of the Louisiana Purchase. And they explain a little about what I've been up to.

And it's a way to get the word out that these trees, that these trees are still around, they haven't all been cut down, and they're worth appreciating and keeping the habitat healthy so that these trees can continue their long, healthy lives for maybe another hundred years at least.

So what does this tree mean to. Is there kind of folklore around this tree, Harvey? Is there other kind of significance to this tree in Louisiana?

Yeah, I think I had actually just discovered on my own in terms of the significance of the tree. I'd like to tie it in, for example, to the Native Americans who lived in the area where these trees have been for centuries.

Another group, the Baton Rouge Audubon Society, took one of the trees that I cored. This is an area near Baton Rouge, the state capital, I guess you could call it still coastal Louisiana.

And it was a tree that I determined to be about 600 years old.

And the leader of the Baton Rouge Audubon Society took it on herself to contact the Chitimacha people that still are sprinkled throughout this area where they lived in numbers previously. And the tree that I cored, this National Audubon Society person, asked one of the Chitimacha after she took them out there to, well, what can we call this tree? To really honor it and show the significance of it to the Chitimacha people?

And the Chitimacha representative said, let's call it Yaghi Nixta, which means the strong spirit, which I really think captured what the Native Americans, particularly the Chitimacha in this case, felt this tree meant to them. In many cases, it's difficult to articulate.

You know, you can talk about how beautiful these trees are, but for people like the Native Americans, not just with old bald cypress, but with many other of the older trees throughout the Northwest, there's a spiritual significance that these trees carry that goes beyond just their aesthetic beauty.

And I think this gets at what I'm hoping to promote as a way to think about these trees is that, yes, they help to build New Orleans and to build pirogues, but that they shouldn't be cut down as commodities. That especially these old trees need to be looked at as for the way the Indians did, for their spiritual significance, that they have beauty, not just their outward physical beauty, but the fact that they've survived 600 years, 700, way over a thousand years. There's this kind of ineffable character to them that the Native Americans recognize and even the Cajuns recognized.

Because we think of it as part of our family. It's been in our family for generations. Which is another way to think about these old trees as kind of senior.

Senior senior citizens that are part of the families of the folks on whose property it's located and who need to be revered and respected for having survived so many generations.

And there's also a way that these, the Cajuns and others can tie themselves back to their earlier generations, to their ancestors, through these trees that have survived so much upheaval, culturally, politically, naturally. Hurricanes, lightning storms, you name it. And they're still kicking after how many hundreds of years just for that reason alone.they're significant to so many people, and they're part of the natural heritage of Louisiana. You know, it is the state tree.

You've done a great job, Harvey, haven't you? I mean, that's just beautiful. And I, I think actually that that name is rather more beautiful than the bald cypress, which basically, presumably refers to the fact that it's deciduous and it loses all its needles, and that's why it became called the bald cypress. I think their naming of it is rather more beautiful.

Yes, I agree.

It's wonderful, the story that comes out of just literally witnessing your tree Gael at your chateau and seeing it fallen. I had no idea it would lead me down this road.

We always have a kind of how to grow section of this podcast. And I certainly am not proposing to grow bald Cyprus, where I live in central London with a garden the size of a postage stamp.

But for anybody who has a larger estate, possibly has water, probably needs water. Can both of you give me a little bit of advice on how to grow one? Gael, do you want to start?

I think it's really very, very easy. It's not. Not a problem. Yeah. In France. Yeah. All the people I know who have planted the bald cypress, there is no problem. Yeah. It's easy.

Yeah. Would they plant it in the water?

Most of them are at the bank of the water in France. Yeah. And the climate suits them. They're happy. Perhaps not in the south, I don't know, but in our region, there is no. A lot. There are a lot. Yeah.

Harvey?

Well, I think your answer, probably, Gael, is that they need to be. I do know this, is that they need to be planted on dry land. As much as we think of them as water dependent.

The seedlings need dry land to get their start.

And once they, at least in Louisiana, we're talking about more the wetland areas, once they are able to start, then they need a particular regimen of water to keep growing. But then they also need drier periods. And what that regimen is, I think, is still up for debate.

And it's part of the reason that we need to preserve what we have. Because in many areas of Louisiana the cypress are not regenerating.

The exception, though, is, ironically, are in the middle of the cities, like New Orleans, in the upland areas, in neighborhoods in New Orleans, there have been many successful cypress planted. They tend to grow much faster. Apparently the soils and other conditions are good for rapid growth.

And you can walk through the neighborhoods of New Orleans and see cypress all over. Some of them pretty large.

But in New Orleans, the trees that are maybe 12, 13 foot in circumference may not be much more than 100 years old, as opposed to in the swamps, where they could be 6 or 700 years old with the same circumference, because they've grown much more slowly. If I plant a bald cypress sapling, assuming I can easily get hold of one, how fast will it grow?

You know, after 10 years, you would have a cypress. I would say at least 10 to 20ft, if not more. 20 to 30ft. They grow.

They grow very quickly in the city of New Orleans, and I can't tell you why, but they do.

Thank you both. I feel, Gael, that you need to do an American tour of trees.

We'd love to have you. Love to show you around.

Wouldn't it be great if one day Gael and Harvey meet up and explore the bald cypress trees of Louisiana, thanks to that gift of a tree from Napoleon to his friend Charles Joseph?

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