Bald cypress reproduce by round cones. These seed cones are usually mature in October/November. The seed will germinate only in very wet areas : lakes, rivers, ponds, etc. Otherwise you will need to germinate them yourself. They take quite a while soaking in order to germinate. My method is to plant the seeds in pots in mud in January with the pots placed in a tub of water. In mid May the pots are taken out of the tub and into the sun, watering every other day. Germination usually follows in about 10 days.

a picture will define the ID of what you have....

and once a latin name is provided ...

then google brings up lots of information on growing seed ...

it is very likely scot is correct.... but i am always leery of self provided ID ... which in your case involves the balls of an alleged cypress ....

lets firm up this ID

ken

Another method to try - plastic sandwich container with the lid..

Moisten the paper towel and place it at the bottom of the container then place the seeds on it. Cover them with another piece of moistened paper towel and put lid on it and place it in the fridge till march. Take it out and leave it inside at the room temperature. Gradually, you will see seeds put out root. Carefully place the seed into well draining container mix and water daily. I use Rootmaker starter tray to produce nice root system.

I tried scot's and it works but doesn't seem to work very well with Rootmaker starter tray because of long roots and I snipped them off to fit into the starter tray. Apparently they do not like that very much! They all died off. I have 5 Montezuma cypress without snipped tap root into 1g pot and they are doing very well. The seedlings were probably just 4-6 inches tall but long root tap.

Lesson learned...

Thanks for all the info. I'll post up a pic.