QUICK FACTS
Name: Bald cypress swamp
Location: First Landing State Park, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Coordinates: 36.90671813879774, -76.02093550787815
Why it's incredible: Under the right light in winter, the swamp becomes a giant rainbow.
Virginia's "rainbow swamp" is a flooded forest whose waters take on a magical, multicolored sheen in the winter months. Under certain lighting conditions, the swamp turns into a giant, luminous rainbow broken up by the shadows of bald cypress trees (Taxodium distichum) and cypress knees — cone-shaped humps that grow vertically above the trees' roots.
