AusBonsai

Today I noticed that there is a swamp cypress I had never noticed before growing in a nearby park. It's about 8-10 metres tall with a half metre thick trunk. I did a little cosmetic pruning on it and came away with a small branch about a metre long and a couple of cms. thick. I cut it into several sections as it had a fair bit of ramification. I also cut off about two thirds of the foliage and all of the fruit, which consisted of sprays of very small berries about 2-3 mm diameter. I applied rooting hormone compound to the cut ends and planted them into a grow pot. My question is, has anyone had success growing Swampy cuttings 1-2 cms thick without layering? I've got a few little twigs I cut off my first swampy that seem to be surviving, but they are only matchstick size.
I also cut a substantial branch off a melaleuca(claret tops I think) in my garden. It's about 3-4 cms thick. I cut off almost all the foliage and planted that in a grow pot also. Same question as before, is there a chance it will grow roots & survive?

It is usual to take cuttings in the growing season. With Melalekuca it might have a better chance than ,the Taxodium. You have taken them it was very adventurous.
Please keep us informed, so we can all benefit from your experiance.

Cheers Pup

I can do large swampy cuttings up to about 30mm, but they are done a bit differently. I seal both ends of the cutting with A.T.C.S tree wound sealant and put the cuttings in a pot of fine deco that sits in a tray of water. I find if the cutting isn't sealed at both ends it dries out and the top and rots at the bottom. Have about 75% success rate with this method.

I find that cuttings of deciduous trees are often reliable during the dormant period. With no leaves the cutting does not dry out as quick and it can slowly form callus over winter. Roots then form quickly in spring when they get active again. Cuttings during active growth are much quicker to root but they do need high humidity to prevent dessication. Note that I do not have a very high strike rate with swampy - winter or summer
I have noticed that cuttings, esp larger diameter, do tend to dry out through the exposed upper cut so Bougie's tip for sealing the ends of larger cuttings makes sense to me. An old tip for dormant cuttings of fruit trees is to tie the cuttings in bunches then bury them completely (lie the bunches horizontal) in the grow bed for winter. Dig them up in spring when the trees start to bud and plant them vertically ready to sprout. By that time most will have good callus and occasionally the start of small roots.
I am interested that your park swampy has fruit only 2-3 mm diameter I collect seed from a couple down here and the cones are 2-3 cm diameter. Cones are currently ripe and starting to break up to disperse the seed. I have grown them from seed in the past.

Thank you all for the replies, I'll report on the progress , positive or not.
Shibui, perhaps what I thought was fruit are actually flower buds not yet opened? I'll go out to the tree and take a photo.
Cheers, Frank.

Do not know how the K got there.
Cheers Pup
Ps maybe my Joffre spilt

From my experience with swamp cypress you can strike quick thick cuttings with no foliage at all late winter into early spring. They seem to strike quite reliably.

Hi Pup, maybe your typing finger had the hiccups.

Hi shibui, I took a photo of the "fruit" or maybe it's the flower buds on the swampie. There were no cones of any sort on it, so obviously the different climate here has it at a different stage in the cycle. The pic is below.

Thanks for that TimS, gives me hope that I won't have to start with matchstick cuttings.

Cheers, Frank.

They're flowers Frank, from wiki it looks like there might also be cones somewhere....

It is monoecious - has both staminate flowers and carpellate flowers on every plant, with male and female flowers forming on slender, tassel-like structures near the edge of branchlets. The male and female strobili are produced from buds formed in late autumn, with pollination in early winter, and mature in about 12 months. The seed cones are green and mature to grayish brown, globular, and 2.0-3.5 cm in diameter. They have from 20 to 30 spirally arranged, four-sided scales, each bearing one, two, or rarely three triangular seeds. Around 20-40 seeds are in each cone. The cones disintegrate at maturity to release the large seeds. The seeds are 5–10 mm long, the largest of any species of Cupressaceae, and are produced every year, with heavy crops every 3-5 years. The seedlings have three to 9, but usually six, cotyledons each

Thanks Mel, I'll have to go back and take another look at it. Learning all the time.

Raging Bull wrote:Today I noticed that there is a swamp cypress I had never noticed before growing in a nearby park. It's about 8-10 metres tall with a half metre thick trunk. I did a little cosmetic pruning on it and came away with a small branch about a metre long and a couple of cms. thick. I cut it into several sections as it had a fair bit of ramification. I also cut off about two thirds of the foliage and all of the fruit, which consisted of sprays of very small berries about 2-3 mm diameter. I applied rooting hormone compound to the cut ends and planted them into a grow pot. My question is, has anyone had success growing Swampy cuttings 1-2 cms thick without layering? I've got a few little twigs I cut off my first swampy that seem to be surviving, but they are only matchstick size.
I also cut a substantial branch off a melaleuca(claret tops I think) in my garden. It's about 3-4 cms thick. I cut off almost all the foliage and planted that in a grow pot also. Same question as before, is there a chance it will grow roots & survive?

I'm unsure how far-off a bald cypress(taxodium distichum) is from a swamp cypress, the foliage looks identical, but FWIW I'd gotten home w/ some cypress stock in Jan and one was too-tall, I took the cut top (no foliage, just a 4" thick section of trunk) and jammed it in the ground under a bench (where it'd always stay wet), anyways after ~2mo I found it was growing!!! I think I killed it in my haste to get it out of the ground and into a pot, it's halted and not done anything since but am doubting it'll make it - however if I'd left it in-ground I have very little doubt it'd have survived!

Bougy Fan wrote:I can do large swampy cuttings up to about 30mm, but they are done a bit differently. I seal both ends of the cutting with A.T.C.S tree wound sealant and put the cuttings in a pot of fine deco that sits in a tray of water. I find if the cutting isn't sealed at both ends it dries out and the top and rots at the bottom. Have about 75% success rate with this method.

Can you tell me about this sealant? I found it on google but can't find what, if anything, differentiates it from other sealants (was a no-sealer guy for a while but have begun sealing some things and am just now learning the various types of sealers and their pro's & con's!)

Very cool that you've got that down to a 75% success rate! What happens when you try larger stuff, presumably the % goes down but have you ever been able to get anything with real girth to stick?

And just because of the topic, plus your username (I swear I never saw yours before registering mine, bougies are just like 2/3 of my collection lol!), I'll just leave this here:



We had a hurricane last year and it tore-down a lot of stuff, I saw a huge pile of bougie-branches at someone's curb and just sawed-off a ~1' long section of trunk and stuck it 4" deep in perlite, at the time I was just pushing to see what I could get to root since bougies seemed almost 100% root-able no matter how thick, anyways it took 6wks to bud but did! (got a progression album here I 'sealed' it by smearing a thin layer of Elmer's Wood Glue over the top, unsure how much of a difference that made as I wasn't using paste on anything at that point and still getting high 90%'s success w/ hardwood bougies)

It is basically like a latex paint. Once it dries it is very hard to get off but stays flexible. It used to come in brown and white and you can mix it together and pattern it to disguise it. I used it on bougies to seal them from cuts and carving and it can be very hard to see.

swamp cypress is just another name for your bald cypress but over here it is an exotic, planted in some parks and a few larger gardens as an ornamental. For you it is a native and probably grows all over the place.