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Ancient bald cypress called Big Mama, now dead, remains standing in Southampton County, Va. (Photo: Irvine Wilson © VA DCR, Natural Heritage Program).

By Bobbie Whitehead

“Big Mama,” a bald cypress tree standing along the banks of the Nottoway River, may have died, but the ancient tree will remain part of the area’s ecology and history for some time.

Her discovery in 2005 in Southampton County, Va., has provided the state a chance to save a 40-acre tract of land, a bald cypress/tupelo forest, considered virgin timber for a nature preserve that holds several trees declared national champions among their varieties.

Big Mama, for now, will serve as a habitat for birds that will build their nests in the tree and will feed off of the insects that live in and on the tree, said Tom Smith, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Natural Heritage Program director.

“As it decays, it will put nutrients back into the soil for other things to grow,” Smith said. “It’s a good possibility it could be standing for along time. It will continue to provide lots of functions to that site.”

The bald cypress tree’s rot-resistant wood and deep, extending roots are what could enable it to last awhile longer.

Officials declared the tree dead in 2008. Although Big Mama had a red sap coming out of it during the fall 2007, it remained alive, but once it failed to grow new foliage during the spring, officials realized its demise was inevitable, Smith said.

“None of us have seen this on a Cypress tree, and we thought it was odd,” Smith said.

The Bald cypress is the type that occurs in flooded bottom lands, and these trees are found throughout Southeastern Virginia, he said. Big Mama stands amid other old trees.

With so much there, the Department of Conservation and Recreation decided to purchase a 375-acre tract of land in Southampton County, including the 40 acres surrounding Big Mama, from owner International Paper to create a nature preserve. Smith said they were expected to close on the deal by the end of January.

”We think there’s never been any harvesting in that 40-acre area,” Smith said.

Once the state completes the purchase, it will have a scientist come in and more accurately determine the age of Big Mama. Some believe the tree to be over 1,500 years old.

“We don’t really know, but we feel pretty sure it’s about 1,000 years old,” Smith said.

Tree experts typically use an incremental borer that is pushed into a tree’s trunk and pulled out to determine the age of the tree by counting the rings from the borer pull, he said; however, it’s difficult to use an incremental borer on a tree that’s as large as Big Mama, 12 ½ feet in diameter. For that reason, other estimating methods are used, he said.

“It’s also difficult to determine the age of these trees; cypress trees have false rings, so you really need to know what you’re doing to figure it out,” he said.

Right now, Big Mama with its 123-foot height and 12.5-foot diameter was classified as the biggest tree in Virginia.

“Big trees are determined by diameter, height and spread of its crown,” Smith said. “It may not be the tallest but a combination of the three made it the biggest.”

Big Mama may have fallen without anyone knowing about her if Byron Carmean, a retired horticulture teacher, had never spotted her in 2005 while out with a friend. When the two left, Carmean said he couldn’t stop thinking about the large trees he saw, so he returned to take measurements of them. At the time, Carmean discovered a tupelo larger than the national champion tupelo. Then, he came across Big Mama.

“All I did that afternoon was take circumferences of trees,” Carmean said.

With the measurements, Carmean called his friend who works for the state. A few state researchers came out, and shortly thereafter the state wanted to buy the property, he said.

“I can tell there’s now some hollowness to Big Mama’s trunk,” said Carmean, who took another trip out along the Nottoway River the other day to visit the old tree.

A large dying tree like the Southampton County bald cypress should remain standing for awhile, depending on a number of factors, one being what caused the tree to die, said Tchukki Andersen, staff arborist with the Tree Care Industry Association, a national organization for tree care professionals.

“You’re not going to be able to make any predictions on how long it will stand until you identify what is causing its death,” Andersen said.

A dead tree may continue standing for a long time, but if its roots rot, it could blow over in high winds, she said. Flooding, too, would cause the cypress to lose its grip in the soil and fall over in high winds.

“You’re not looking at something that will happen tomorrow, but I would guess that in five years, you could start to see some radical differences in the tree,” Andersen said.

Even though Big Mama has passed on, Carmean plans to visit her again, and notes that the forest contains many more old trees.

“Southampton County has the most champion trees than any other county in Virginia,” he said.

Virginia Tech has a web site dedicated to documenting the large trees in the state, and to find out where they are, visit http://www.fw.vt.edu/4h/bigtree/bigtree_search.cfm.