One would think that that would be enough for one family, and be done with it. But no... There are also to be reckoned with the famous bald cypress trees in the deep south (Taxodium distichum), seen here with their famous "knees" while visiting Louisiana. This is to say nothing of the cypress trees I encountered while visiting my brother in the Texas Hill Country - possibly but not necessarily the same species.
But it does not stop at this embarrassment of riches. There are also the entire worlds of junipers and cypresses and the many images those words conger up. Juniper, a component of gin, is one of the most expressionistic looking of all plants. In Sedona, AZ it is said that their twisted, corkscrew growth patterns reflect the energy of the vortexes. Whether that is true or not, it is hard to argue with the cartoon-Kabuki-Dr. Caligari profile of a Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa). The better known Mediterranean cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) has a very different effect with its tall, skinny, calming elegence, a familiar archetypal component of Italian landscaping (seen below at the Krishnamurti house in Ojai, CA).
And still, the story of the cypress family does not stop here. For that, one needs to dig all the way back to the earliest encounter of all, the rows of arborvitae on my Dad's property in New York. The word "arborvitae" would slip gracefully off his tongue as though it were the most common everyday object. "It's over there by the arborvitae" he would say. For years this Latin phrase, which means "tree of life", intrigued me. I later assumed it must be the genus name, an understandable conjecture, but in fact the genus name in this case is Thuja.
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