Inexorable adj. not capable of being moved by entreaty: unyielding.
The Cape Fear River,
North Carolina’s largest
river basin, stretches across
more than 9,000 square
miles of North Carolina’s
landscape. It begins as a
network of swampy streams
in the piedmont area of
Greensboro, and grows with
water from hundreds of
tributaries that drain
surrounding lands, then
discharges its contents
into the Atlantic Ocean
about 20 miles south of
Wilmington; the last of
several major towns and
cities that draw water from
the river.
In recent years, observers
in lower reaches of the Cape
Fear River, including its
tributaries, have witnessed
a disquieting condition
among trees that once
thrived in and around this
great river’s waters: Many
of the once lush cypress,
tupelo and other swamp
trees are dead, and still more
are presently dying. It’s not
a new situation, but the
breadth and scope of dead
trees, many within sight of
busy highways, has caught
public attention, and earned
the stark wooden skeletons
the moniker, Ghost Trees.
In truth, most of the
Cape Fear’s ghost trees
seen by passersby are the
remains of baldcypress,
Taxodium distichum,
a decay-resistant plant
specially adapted to
growing in freshwater
wetland environs, including
the swamp forests found
adjacent to the Cape Fear
River and its tributaries.
A native of the American
Southeast, baldcypress are
conifer trees related to the
famous redwood trees of
the Pacific Northwest. Like
their redwood cousins,
baldcypress are long-lived
trees, as evidenced by several
still living today in a swamp
on the Black River, a tribu-tary
to the Cape Fear River,
that are estimated to be
more than 1,700 years old.
Baldcypress wood is
renowned and prized for
its decay resistance, and
many of the ghost trees
seen along the Cape Fear
River’s shoreline have been
standing dead for decades.
Living or dead, baldcypress
trees provide habitat value
to wildlife. While cypress
wood is decay resistant, the
trunks of old-growth liv-ing
trees are often hollow,
which creates shelter for
cavity-dwelling animals,
including woodpeckers, bats
and tree frogs among other
species. Trees with a diam-eter
of four to five feet may
disguise a hollowed center
spacious enough to shelter
adult black bears.
Baldcypress are adapted
to life in a wet environment,
specifically freshwater
wetlands, including riverine
swamps. For reasons not
fully understood, baldcypress
trees produce, from their
roots, odd-shaped stumps
called knees. Cypress knees
can grow up to five feet
tall, depending on water
conditions, and may provide
structural support for the
trees, with roots that must
remain close to the swamp
soil surface to avoid suf-focating
from lack of oxy-gen
under stagnant water.
Cypress knees may also
serve as mechanisms for gas
exchange, carrying oxygen
from air to roots submerged
in low-oxygenated water
and soil.
While the exact role
of cypress knees may be
debated, we know with
certainty that, in addition
to contributing to biological
diversity, baldcypress and
other swamp trees and
plants perform ecosystem
services to our benefit,
including water storage,
cycling and filtration; ser-vices
we cannot easily rep-licate
through engineering,
let alone for free as swamps
provide. This brings us back
to the ghost trees haunting
the lower reaches of the
Cape Fear River and its
tributaries.
Cape Fear’s ghost trees
are silent reminders of a
bygone era, a bygone
climate and a bygone river.
The ghost trees we see
throughout the Cape Fear’s
lower reaches died as a result
of saltwater intrusion that
proved toxic for the fresh-water
trees and the habitats
they once helped support.
Saltwater continues to flood
into and up the Cape Fear
River, just as it has done for
thousands of years. What
is different today from
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WBM november 2013