Terellce de March, age 8, of Peterborough, Ont.,Canada.,for his question:

What are bald cypress knees?

Sometimes we see cypress knees in the stores that sell things to beautify our homes. A visitor to Florida may bring back Some of them as gifts. They are woody turrets and spires that are so graceful you might mistake them for the palaces of pixies. These cypress knees come from one of the most amazing trees in the world.

The bald cypress is not really a true cypress tree. It is a distant cousin of the mighty redwood tree that grows in California. The redwood is a piny, cone bearing tree that keeps its needles all year long, The bald cypress sheds its leaves in the fall, and its spreading branches are bare and bald through the winter. Its leaves are small, pale green needles, and its cones are round and scaly balls no bigger than walnuts.

A cone baring tree that sheds its leaves is amazing. But the bald cypress has even more amazing tricks. It is one of the few big trees that can grow with its roots in soggy swampland. Other trees need some moisture from the ground, but their roots must have a little air mixed in the soil. There are small pockets of air even deep underground, and tree roots need the oxygen in this air.

In a soggy swamp, drenched with stagnant water, there is no air and no oxygen for the tree roots. The bald cypress grows in these soggy swamps. Its sturdy roots twine through the mud and hold the tall tree upright. Here and there some of the roots send up graceful turrets above the water. These axe called cypress knees.

Experts think that the woody knees take oxygen from the air. If this is so, then we know how the bald cypress can live with its roots in swampy mud where there is no oxygen. The knees that poke above the marsh water get oxygen from the air.

The handsome little turrets, each one diff erent from the next, are taken from the swamps, cleaned and polished, When finished, they glow with a satin smooth finish of golden brown    and every one of them is pretty enough to serve as a palace for a pixie.

The bald cypress loves warm climates. It grows about the marshes near the mouth of the Mississippi River and in the soggy swamplands of Florida. Its huge trunk may be 12 feet around, and it may lift its giant branches 150 feet into the air. Through the winter the great tree stands stripped of its feathery needles  ¬which is why it is called the bald cypress.