Leaves on distichously spreading branchlets, apiculate, ½′—¾′ long, about 1/12′ wide, light bright yellow-green or occasionally silvery white below; or on the form with pendulous compressed branchlets long-pointed, keeled and stomatiferous below, concave above more or less spreading at the free apex, about ½′ long; in the autumn turning with the branchlets dull orange-brown before falling. Flowers: panicles of staminate flowers 4′—5′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, with slender red-brown stems, obovoid flower-buds nearly ⅛′ long, pale silvery-gray during winter and purple when the flowers expand in the spring. Fruit usually produced in pairs at the end of the branch or irregularly scattered along it for several inches, nearly globose or obovoid, rugose, about 1′ in diameter, the scales generally destitute of tips; seeds with wings nearly ¼′ long, ⅛′ wide. A tree, with a tall lobed gradually tapering trunk, rarely 12° and generally 4°—5° in diameter above the abruptly enlarged strongly buttressed usually hollow base, occasionally 150° tall, in youth pyramidal, with slender branches often becoming elongated and slightly pendulous, in old age spreading out into a broad low rounded crown often 100° across, and slender branchlets light green when they first appear, light red-brown and rather lustrous during their first winter, becoming darker the following year, the lateral branchlets deciduous, 3′—4′ long, spreading at right angles to the branch, or in the form with acicular leaves pendulous or erect and often 6′ long. Bark 1′—2′ thick, light cinnamon-red and divided by shallow fissures into broad flat ridges separating on the surface into long thin closely appressed fibrous scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, easily worked, light or dark brown, sometimes nearly black; largely used for construction, railway-ties, posts, fences, and in cooperage. Distribution. River swamps usually submerged during several months of the year, low wet banks of streams, and the wet depressions of Pine-barrens from southern New Jersey and southern Delaware southward generally near the coast to the Everglade Keys, southern Florida, and through the Gulf-coast region to the valley of Devil River, Texas, through Louisiana to southern Oklahoma, through southern and western Arkansas to southeastern Missouri, and through western and northern Mississippi to Tishomingo County, and in western Tennessee and Kentucky to southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana; most common and of its largest size in the south Atlantic and Gulf states, often covering with nearly pure forests great river swamps. From the coast of North Carolina to southern Florida, southern Alabama and eastern and western Louisiana the form with acicular leaves (_Taxodium distichum_ var. _imbricarium_, Sarg.) is not rare as a small tree in Pine-barren ponds and swamps.