Dawn Redwood

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The dawn redwood has the botanical name Metasequoia glyptostoboides. Metasequoa trees may look like evergreen sequoias but they are deciduous, dropping their needles in the fall. The metasequoia was considered extinct until the early 1940s when a tree that formed part of a village shrine was discovered in China. Local villagers called it Shuǐshān or 'water fir'. In 1947, seeds and trees were harvested and distributed for growth trails to Chinese institutions and botanical gardens worldwide. Other living specimens were eventually discovered in a few scattered groves in central China. Only about 5,000 trees exist in the wild today. The species is endangered and wild trees in China are protected.

Metasequoia are remnants of ancient species that were once geographically widespread. They now naturally exist only in a very small pocket in the Sichuan and Hubei provinces in west-central China. Conifer species are ancient, predating the rise of flowering plants by many millions of years. Metasequoia are particularly old, dating back 66 million years.