Pembroke Creek
Chowan County, NC

It wasn’t actually Christmas Day but it was nearing the end of the year and the season of renewal. The delicate needles of this bald cypress seemed especially festive, highlighted by the winter sun.

The bald cypress is something of an anomaly. It’s a conifer so it has needles rather than leaves but it’s deciduous, so it loses those needles in the fall, growing a new suit in the spring.

It takes a lot of energy to grow all of those needles each year. It’s typically a strategy adopted by trees in cold climates as a defense against drying out in winter. But the bald cypress grows in southern wetlands where the weather is warmer.

Bald cypress is especially sensitive to dry conditions and drought. It may be that adopting the tactics of deciduous trees helps them survive the drier conditions of winter in the southern wetlands.