MacInOakRidge

For many years I have had an idea. I have not had access to a cypress swamp that I could do what I wanted, when and where. I have an idea and would like to throw it out for someone who would be willing to experiment and give it a shot.

You need a nice looking cypress knee. Wide base tapering to a point. You'll find those all over a good cypress swamp. The next gets a little more difficult.

You need that knee to have a smaller or several smaller cypress trees growing near it. Drill several, properly placed holes in the knee and thread a branch through the holes. This is the typical way of grafting a branch on a tree where you want it.

Let the thing grow. In a year or so find out if the knee has adopted the branches and the branches can be cut off the donor tree and survive. If that happens then harvest the knee with root system attached.

If it works you would have a killer bald cypress with no cut back of the top, no pruning scars to heal, no jin. Only scars would be where you cut off the donor branch on the side of the knee, it would heal over quickly. No carving of the place where normally you would cut off the top of a tree to get the taper trunk. And no waiting for a suitable branch to develop to take the place of the top that was cut off. Just drill and put a branch there.

The result would be a nicely tapered tree with a very interesting trunk. The next part of the experiment would be to see if the limb growth would activate the natural sprouting of new buds on the old bark of the knee as you see when you chop off the top of a big cypress.

Any one out there willing and able to give this a shot? I think it would work.

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