To summarize: at that time, the tree was only known as an fossil tree species, extinct for millions of years. Botanists think this species is the ancestor of the present day coast redwood. ĭue to its resemblance to the North American coast redwood ( Sequoia sempervirens), he named the tree species Metasequoia, which means 'almost a sequoia, sequoia-ish'. In 1941 Shigeru Miki of Japan was reclassifying fossil remains that had been incorrectly classified as Sequoia and Taxodium. This tree was once one of the most widespread tree species in the Northern hemisphere (during the Tertiary period).įossils have been found across the northern hemisphere, including Greenland and Spitzbergen, dating from when the continents were further south, and close together sharing a common flora. The foliage of this Asiatic conifer is very similar to that of the North American bald cypress ( Taxodium distichum). She is an avid birder and builds and sells handcrafted nest boxes through her company, Woodland Habitat.The dawn redwood or just plain 'metasequoia' ( Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is one of the three species of sequoia (together with the giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum and the coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens). Gayle Pille is a local naturalist and nature writer, with regular contributions to the Northern Kentucky Tribune.

Dawn Redwood, nearly 60 years old, towers above Covington, KY (Jason Gray).

While Giant Sequoias are found in in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. True to their name, Coast Redwoods grow along the Pacific coast from Southern Oregon to Central California. Now protected in China, the soft wood was once used for cabinet making.ĭawn Redwoods are one of only three redwoods found in the world. It is unisexual, with male and female flowers on the same tree. Its leaves are bright green, turning copper in fall before losing them until the following spring. The Dawn Redwood is a fast growing deciduous tree reaching a height of more than 100-feet with a 25-foot spread. The World Conservation Union has classified it as “critically endangered” due to human encroachment.

Unfortunately, in nature, the Dawn Redwood is restricted to only a few small and scattered stands in China. Now, 60-plus years later, the beauteous Dawn Redwood is a popular landscape tree here and abroad. By 1948 this seed was being distributed to botanic gardens and universities across the world, most certainly saving the Dawn Redwood from extinction. Despite a government ban, scientists accompanied by armed guards collected four pounds of seed and sent them to Boston. In 1947 Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum sent another expedition to China to collect seed from these newly discovered redwoods. It was determined that the Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, a tree thought to be extinct for more than 5 million years, was indeed ALIVE! About 1,000 Dawn Redwoods were living in very isolated groves in Southeastern China along with birch, chestnut, sweet gum, beech and oak trees. After the war, Professor Cheng of China’s National Central University sent an expedition to the Szechwan Province in 1946 for a complete study. Since China was in the midst of war, making study expeditions impossible, these redwoods were pretty much ignored at the time.

Then in 1944 a forester with China’s National Central University stumbled upon a small grove of redwoods in the rice paddies of China’s Szechwan Province, not even knowing what they were at the time. The Dawn Redwood was first described in Japan in 1941 by Shigeru Miki, who thought he had a discovered the fossils of a tree long since extinct. The story reads like a Nancy Drew mystery. Were it not for good luck and perseverance, this living fossil may well have been lost to extinction forever. Not considered a native species to Kentucky, the Dawn Redwood once was a very common tree in our landscape - 50 to 100 million years ago when the dinosaurs roamed.įossil records show that Dawn Redwoods were common across the Northern Hemisphere, including North America, Greenland and Europe.

Metasequoia trees