![]() ![]() Westonbirt’s Plant Record Officer, Alison, pointed out to me that our Metasequoia (tree number 240051, in the Savill Glade) is most likely to be one from this introduction. ![]() The first introduction of dawn redwood outside of China was through the Arnold Arboretum in the USA in 1948 when, with the Chinese botanists, up to several kilograms of seeds were collected in the wild and distributed for growth trials to Chinese institutions the Arnold Arboretum, Missouri Botanic Garden, and elsewhere in the United States botanic gardens at Kew, Edinburgh, and other locations in the United Kingdom. It was a few years later, in 1944, when living specimens of this, thought to be an exciting new species, were found in the Hubei province in China. It is one of five deciduous conifer genera of conifers as is, in my view the most spectacular in the autumn when the deciduous needles start turning russet-brown with tints of coppery pink.ĭawn redwood was first discovered in 1941 as a fossil of a tree that first appeared during the Mesozoic Era (the age of the dinosaurs approximately 250 to 65 million years ago). The species name ‘ glyptostroboides’ refers to its physical resemblance with another conifer – Glyptostrobus or Chinese swamp cypress. The word sequoia means 'coniferous tree' while from Greek, meta- means ‘changed’, therefore Metasequoia translates to a changed or transformed coniferous tree, such as coastal redwood. The Latin name can tell us much about the appearance of this species of tree. It is the dawn redwood ( Metasequoia glyptostroboides). Today we will have a closer look at another of the ‘living fossils’ we grow at Westonbirt. Michal Dvorak (Westonbirt Arboretum Forestry England Dendrologist) ![]()
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