[Printable brochure about cypress mulch]
Recently, I visited a site prepared for the display of native plants, ostensibly for the education of the general public through demonstration of the identification and correct use of plant materials, surely with the sincere goal of the improvement of our landscaped urban environment To my dismay, the most visible feature on site was a mountain of bagged cypress mulch. Whether this occurred because of oversight by lack of sight, or more likely by the generosity of a dealer in the lucrative cypress mulch mining, industry, it is incompatible with native plant philosophy, and more significantly, an affront to every attempt at the preservation of Florida's rapidly disappearing wilds and freshwater wetlands.
Most of the cypress trees in Florida were logged for lumber decades ago; none were replanted, and logged over land often succeeded to maple, swamp, or, was drained, burned and otherwise "improved."' Today, mulch is not being produced as a byproduct of any cypress lumber operation. Large tracts of native pond cypress are simply being out and ground into mulch The result is a net loss of productive wetland, water recharge and purification areas, and the horrible, irony of seeing a living cypress forest reduced to a temporary ornamental mulch for a be- of exotic pest-plants supplied by the local garden center.
The cypress tree deserves a modicum of respect, if only for the rot-, resistant wood produced by older trees. A relative of the giant sequoia and coast redwood of California, it once fed and sheltered dinosaurs and the, more recently extinct Carolina parakeet and ivory-billed woodpecker. Trees can live for hundreds of years and tolerate flood, freeze, hurricane, and fire, but cannot repel bulldozers without our help. There are no more excuses for the continued purchase and use of cypress mulch:
Do not buy cypress mulch. Do not use cypress mulch. Instead, plant cypress trees and mulch them with melaleuca mulch, composted St. Augustine grass, or the mulch from ground-up carrotwood trees. If we do not act to influence the marketplace, then there will be no more cypress trees, and there will be no more cypress swamps, and in any case, there will be no more cypress mulch.
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Copyright 2003-2009
Pinellas Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society — Last Updated Aug. 19, 2009 Direct web site comments/corrections/suggestions to Pinellas FNPS Webmaster —Return to Top of Page— |