I have planted bald cypress and pond cypress seed collected from local trees for two years know, and can't seem to get better than around a 25% germination rate.I collected the seed from the tree as they where all but falling off,soaked half in water and half in alcohol,kept in the frig all winter wrapped in peet moss in a ziplock bag, and planted in the spring.Germination between the two was the same,out of 250 pond cypress seed only 43 sprouted this year,BC WHERE IN 2010,PC WHERE IN 2011.Anyone have a better way or see something wrong with the way i've been doing it.

I stumbled across this thread and read with interest. I have an @ 8 year in ground Peve Minaret Bald Cypress planted in wet clay soil here in PNW, south end of WA. We chose this tree because we fell in love with the soft ferny needles & the interesting bark. It has developed knees quite a distance from the trunk. Because I prune it to maintain size, it has a pretty interesting branch structure all winter. I was hesitant to prune but from research on the conifer society site I learned this tree is very amenable to pruning. The conifer garden in the Oregon Garden Resort in Silvedale, OR has a couple of Peve Minarets which are pruned and they’re gorgeous speciman trees. These are older pics from 2016 & 2020 - You can see from the 4 year size difference why I needed to prune. I believed the plant tag info of a 10’ mature height. Our moderate temps & wet winters make many plants far exceed their nursery tag growth descriptions!

I have some similar damage/injury to my bald cypress, like what is shown in your pics 1 and 7. The damage on my trees is about 8 ft from the ground on 18 ft(ish) trees, all on the ESE side. I noticed the injury this summer when I saw sap oozing from strange narrow "lifted bark" wounds in the trees. The bark has since flaked off the areas in question, and now they appear to mostly be healed/healing. Much less severe than some of what you are seeing, so I wasn't going to worry about it unless it got worse. I assumed the issue with my trees was caused by the severe ice storm, that damaged many trees locally in coastal NC. I am always amazed at how flexible my bald cypress are during hurricanes and tropical storms, and the ice storm was no different. They were completely coated with ice, and the upper 1/2 of each tree was almost bending to the ground from the weight. A strong NW wind blew to really get things mashed up with the weight of the ice.

Bald Cypress, "Taxodium distichum" leaves would be a good additions to soil, as would any most other form of vegetative waste. There are very persistent myths about that adding tree leaves to soil will cause that soil to become acidic while good research say that is not true. Studies done at the UCONN Agricultural Research Station in New Haven, Conn showed there was no significant change in soil pH after several years of adding Oak leaves and Pine needles to the soil. Since Oak, Maple, Beech, Chestnut, and many other leaves will leave stains on concrete I would suspect that Bald Cypress would as well.