Metasequoia glyptostroboides Seeds | Dawn Redwood
LATIN NAME: Metasequoia glyptostroboides
COMMON NAME: Dawn Redwood
Plant Profile
The dawn redwood is a deciduous conifer: the soft, flat needles and the slender branchlets holding them are shed together in autumn, the single habit that most often convinces a new grower that the tree has died. The arrangement of the needles settles the identity. In Metasequoia the leaves are opposite, in pairs mirrored across the stem, while the leaves of the bald cypress beside it in collections are alternate. That one character, checked with a fingernail on a young shoot, separates the two genera.
The trunk rises with a pronounced flare and buttress at the base, and the bark shreds in long fibrous strips, giving the tree a solid, coarse footing in wet ground. The needles carry the autumn palette: green fades to a cinnamon-apricot that holds on the branches for a while before the whole canopy releases in one movement, leaving a clean grey framework for the winter. Growth is fast, with a strong leading shoot and a generous spread of ascending branches.
The living trees were found in Lichuan county, Hubei, in the 1940s, standing in valley bottoms and along watercourses, and the material was soon understood to match Miki’s fossil genus. The species was described for science by Hu and Cheng, and seed collected from the relict stands went out to gardens and arboreta in 1948, which is why so many temperate botanical collections hold trees of similar age. Nearly every dawn redwood outside China today descends from that distribution.
Metasequoia fossils are not confined to East Asia: the genus turns up across the northern hemisphere, including Arctic deposits that once supported temperate forest, which is how it earned the label of living fossil. The record also says something about habit, since leaf shedding looks odd in a conifer until you place the lineage in a strongly seasonal, high-latitude climate and see the adaptation travel south with it.
Science & Biotechnology
Because the wild population is tiny and geographically confined, molecular work has concentrated on how much variation remains and how it is arranged between stands, and the answer is not much: the relict trees are closely related to one another. Chloroplast and nuclear markers have been used to compare the surviving groves and to check whether nursery lines represent what is left in the wild. There has also been extensive work on propagating selected trees clonally, by cutting and shoot culture.
Uses & Benefits
The species has been planted very widely in China since the relict stands were publicised, as an avenue tree and in shelter belts, and it has been trialled as a fast-growing timber tree on suitable sites. Its tolerance of atmospheric moisture and its rapid growth made it an obvious choice for wet valley land, and nurseries in China and Europe now offer selections with narrower or denser habits. Popularity has not solved the conservation problem, because the wild groves remain confined.
Growing from Seed
For a grower with damp ground and space, this is one of the most rewarding conifers available: it tolerates wet, even seasonally flooded soils, moves quickly into a strong conical shape, and marks the autumn better than most relatives. Plant it where the spreading base will not be crowded by paving or a wall, because the buttress needs room. It also works as a specimen by a pond, where the colour is reflected.
A high proportion of the seed in any cone is empty, so sow more than you need and do not judge a batch by the husks in the packet. Sow in a sandy, free-draining mix and cover lightly, keep the pan cool and moist, and protect it from mice; the seedling lifts its first needles and then grows quickly. Prick the seedlings out into deep pots once they stand about five centimetres tall, and plant out at knee height.
Few pests bother the tree in temperate gardens; spider mites build up on dry, hot sites and dull the needles, and canker has been recorded on stressed plants. Young trees in exposed positions benefit from a stake for a few seasons, since the leading shoot is soft and easily bent, and a windbreak keeps the crown symmetrical. Cones ripen in autumn on trees of bearing age and are dried indoors before the seed is shaken out.
Our Take
Plant it for October, when the needles go cinnamon and the ground beneath turns the same colour, and give it the damp, open site it wants. Two companions make the story clearer in a collection: the bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, the alternate-leaved lookalike, and the maidenhair tree Ginkgo biloba, another living fossil whose fossils once ran ahead of its living plants. The giant sequoia page on Sequoiadendron giganteum shows how the other side of the family handles cold.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Dawn Redwood: