dawn redwood tree metasequoia glyptostroboides

Below is a photo taken several winters ago showing the long shadow cast by one of our Dawn Redwoods… in the centre of the shot. But given the space, it is a magnificent tree. If you want one for your own property, plan carefully – it grows very tall, 70-100 feet, and can reach up to 40 feet in width.

Ok, then, let’s consider one of Europe’s favorite large trees, the Dawn Redwood, with my favorite scientific name, Metasequoia glytostroboides. The dawn redwood grows in open forests, preferring shady, moist areas, such as ravines and stream banks, although the dawn. The tree grows at a fast rate-increasing an average of 24 inches a year. So, after all this effort to find short and skinny trees for the urban spaces, larger canopy cover is the new buzz. The dawn redwood's natural range is an area of only about 232 square miles in China, however it has been planted successfully around the world. That may have been a similar thought occurring to several different Chinese foresters. For more in depth reading on the history of the Dawn Redwood, have a look at this publication by the Arnold Arboretum. Dawn Redwood Metasequoia glyptostroboides. Dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides elegantly enhances its growing space throughout the calendar year, but the rich, changeable autumn color, yellow-brown, apricot, russet-brown, causes many people to stop, pause, and ponder, What is that tree. Now, seven decades later, the Dawn Redwood is commercially available in garden centres and nurseries everywhere. The Dawn Redwood, is a fast-growing, critically endangered deciduous conifer and is the sole living species of the genus Metasequoia and one of three. The Arnold Arboretum was the first North American institution to receive seeds and was instrumental in their distribution to botanical gardens and universities around the world. A few years later a grove of Dawn Redwood was discovered in an isolated valley in China. That all changed in 1941 when a Chinese botanist discovered an unusual tree in a remote village – samples later confirmed that it was a Dawn Redwood. It existed on earth more than 50 million years ago, the only sign of existence being fossils found in Asia and North America.

The history of the Dawn Redwood is a very interesting one. While it is unlikely that this species will become Extinct due to its wide use as an ornamental tree and presence in many ex situ collections around the world, wild populations remain at risk and conservation measures in situ are a high priority.Metasequoia glyptostroboides – Dawn Redwood The Arnold Arboretum and several partner institutions helped to collect the species from the wild in 1947, then distributed seeds to locations worldwide. This taxon provides a good example of international collaborative conservation efforts. The Global Survey of Ex situ Conifer Collections(Shaw & Hird, 2014) reports that this is the most common threatened conifer taxa reported in ex situ collections globally, with 316 collections. The foliage of soft, flat needles is bright green. The large mature trees have all been afforded some level of protection, although efforts to protect the species more widely are currently lacking. Metasequoia glyptostroboides is a deciduous conifer with a pyramidal crown structure and a vertical trunk. The several subpopulations are all reduced to a few mature individual trees with little chance of natural regeneration due to changes in land use. It is a riparian species that occurs only in a limited region in the border area between Hubei and Hunan and in Chongqing Municipality. The Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) was known through its fossils to have existed up to 225 million years ago but was thought to be extinct. Plant size: Grafted tree, 18-24 with strong central leader. The bark and foliage are very similar to the other redwood species but unlike these other species, the dawn redwood is deciduous – its needles turn from green to a foxy reddish brown in autumn. Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Ogon Golden Dawn Redwood Hardiness: USDA zones 5-9. Endemic to central China, this species is a living fossil first discovered in the wild in 1943. Although smaller than both of these giant species, it can still grow to a height of at least 60m. The Dawn Redwood is the last surviving member of ancient genus – Metasequoia. It is related to two other members of the cypress family also known as Redwoods: the Coast Redwood and the Giant Redwood.

Dawn redwood tree metasequoia glyptostroboides