Good to hear there has been some success with planting them in shallow water. I have planted some at the waterline and some a couple feet below the future waterline. lkz5ia - 99+ percent of my trees are planted out of water. I have planted about 8000 seedlings and counting the last 3 years as part of my reforestation project. I am simply trying to add features to make my pond more appealing to the eye - plus I'm guessing the fish will like the structure. I have planted the bald cypress / dawn redwoods in a corner of each pond. Am interested to see how they grow once the water comes up. Will let you know - hopefully we get some runoff this year. We've been dry as a bone for about 18 months now. Here is a link from erniew posted on gardenweb of the cypress trees just down I-70 from me. Pretty cool looking - I am definately going to visit next time I'm in St. Louis. John Here is a link that might be useful:

I have a grafted Shawnee Brave Bald Cypress approx 50' downhill from a few Black Walnuts & 25' from the dripline. It's in moist clay - the water is run-off from up by the Walnut trees. It's growing so slow, less than 8" per year, & the needle/leaves are very short compared to other specimens I've seen. It looks chlorotic, but pH is neutral - I'm considering composting it. It's just not right... I had a 2nd Shawnee Brave w/ same growth issues, 12' closer to the BW. One winter this BC suddenly died back to the graft after 2 or 3 yrs growing. It resprouted below the graft as common BC, beautiful green fast growing stems - 36" in 1 season - but alot of those stems died over the next winter, then it shot up new stems... Eventually I got rid of it - I didn't need a Bald Cypress 'shrub'. I assumed the appearance & issues were caused by poor roots due to clay, but when I dug up the 1st tree I was surprised how deep & strong the roots grew in just a few years. I still think the problem is the planting location or Shawnee Brave weaknesses, but maybe juglone can stunt Bald Cypress growth.

"Is Coast Redwood hardiness in the east limited by its root system...?" I would say it definitely isn't. The tops of mine have been burned in the past 2 winters, but the roots had no trouble pushing them to a quick recovery in the mid-spring. And that is without heavy mulch, too. The thought some "hardiness life force" will come up from the roots is mistaken. If anything, dawn redwood roots are "used" to getting to shut down in the winter. If that happened on a coast redwood top growth, it would be disastrous. One reason they can grow along the eastern seaboard, within reason, is very dry soil in winter here is statistically highly unlikely, compared with, say, parts of the midwest. cf: http://www.climatesource.com/images/ppt_jan.gif

I am betting it is cold damage. North American climates tend to be much more unstable (compared to the "temperate" Asian counterpart of this tree's native home). Dawn Redwoods are prone to this type of damage in much of North America where premature, early season heat causes leafing out followed by hard frosts. This is less of an issue in eastern coastal areas (from Maine to NJ and points south), where a still cold ocean delays the budding until Spring is really sprung. P.S., I have also seen damage on this species locally from premature Spring heat (April temps in the 90's with wind). They are generally hardy trees but don't like these crazy extremes within seasons, so, in North America some of the best specimens are exhibited in areas where more extreme temperatures contrasts are mitigated (proximity to seacoasts helps in this case).