I have read of a technique of letting them grow very tall by leaving them in the ground and not pruning for several years. The theory being that the wind hitting the height will stimulate a thicker base to it. Eventually you can chop the trunk to the hieght you like and pull one of the horizontal branches vertically with a wire,(this will be your new vertical shoot) When you do this chop, look at the base/roots first, which ever side of the tree has the most attractive roots, make that the front. Now with this in mind you will want your trunk chop to be diagonaly sloping (not a strait chop) towards the rear, this way you wont see the big cut. This cut will eventually heal over. Typically these trees have their branches wired parallel with the ground. But still dig up annually in the spring and plant back right back into the ground, this is to stimulate lots of fine roots close to the trunk, and prevent a large tap root which would make it difficult to eventually dig up as well as difficult to fit it into a pot. With many fine roots, I have heard to get the cypress knees, you take a hook and gradually pull a few of the shallow roots up and bend them (double them up), with time the root will thicken and this will look like a knee. The National Arboretum in Wash.DC has an amazing giant cypress bonsai, you might find a picture of it on that site. I will try also to post a pict of it on the gallery. good luck

castorcrap, Thanks. (sounds like a winner to me). I was just browsing pictures of Bald Cypress bonsai. (good stuff) It seems there's a good bit of patience involved. 10yr old specimen still seemed a bit stringy, but the years will roll by whether I'm growing bonsai or not. I'll apply your method.

In the mean time, there's a 5ft flame tree that has an appointment with Dr. Blade. =D

Also, thanks for the very detailed information.

underdog, just to let you know, I just heard that bald cypress is known for being able to force out buds along the bare trunk after a trunk chop.

I find that the straggely looking ones are probably a result of not letting the trunk develop before pruning. These trees grow fast in the ground in their first years because they grow naturally in a swamp, and must grow out of the water quickly before dying. To get good knees on a swamp cypress you can grow the plant in a wet swampy soil. I've seen very nice bonsai specimans planted in an undrained deep swampy bonsai pot. I recommend allowing the tree to grow tall and develop a thick trunk before cutting back. Good luck.

Our neighborhood has a pond with several tall cypress growing around it. So, we went looking for nuts which had sprouted. We found a Cypress sapling which had taken root in some rocks held to the bank by some retaining mesh. Its roots were in the lake, and its top had been weed-whacked for several seasons, it appeared. It was about 14 inches high with a trunk about one-half-inch thick.
It was easy to pull all the roots out of the wire and rocks in a hand-full of swamp-muck.
The main trunk is about twelve inches long and it had this bristly bunch of branches on top. We potted it and it spent the summer on our back deck.
When the squirrels started digging in its pot, I put it in the garage. In the depth of Winter, I trimmed back the tallest of the branches which had grown during the Summer. It is just nearing the end of its first winter in its pot. It still looks kind of funny with its "bush" of branches, but I think it's got great potential. The upper branches just need to thicken to better match the trunk.
I feel that, since we found it growing IN the lake, there is little worry of over-watering.