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.

Frost is the most likely culprit. Last year one of mine get hit for the first time. It was oddly localized also, other larger trees in the neighborhood it is in were not damaged. By coincidence larger trees seem to leaf out just a bit later.

Yes, they are a nice bright orange for a few days. Even more promising though are the Chinese hybrid Bald Cypress like 'Banita' and 'La Nana'. They can have a very prolonged, even later fall color that has sometimes lasted for over a month here. Since they are hybrids with the evergreen Mexican bald cypress, it's kind of a case of the plant being semi-evergreen. There's a tendency for semi-evergreen plants to look horrible in borderline climates, like the Quercus X turneri I once had. But in this case it works out: This is T406 now named 'La Nana', on Dec 18 of last year. This lasted for almost a month. Temps below 20F seem to finally force them to drop off.