We fledgling Master Naturalists arrived at Webb WMA at 9 a.m. on February 25th, 2008. My journal page notes indicate it was cloudy and chilly but the sun broke thru around 11. All in all, a pretty spring day.

I’ve scanned part of my journal notes for the morning session. We visited a Cypress/Tupelo swamp and bottom land hardwood forest to ID trees.

You’ll note that my page is written in ink. I actually wrote it in pencil, and then after the field trip, cleaned up any misspellings, ( I’m famous for my phonetic spelling – sometimes spell check can’t even identify my spelling interpretations!) and added an illustration of the Bald Cypress. This process really helped me distill the flood of new information gathered in class. I’m one who has to go over and over information to help it sink in and stay in my memory banks. It’s one reason I’ve decided to share my field notes in my blog. One more opportunity to refresh my memory 🙂

I hope you’ll enjoy learning about the Bald Cypress, Taxodium distichum. Later this spring, after the cypress leaf out, I hope to make a journal page devoted to both the Bald and Pond Cypress trees. Their leaves are really quite different.