Metasequoia glyptostroboides Seeds | Dawn Redwood
LATIN NAME: Metasequoia glyptostroboides
COMMON NAME: Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia
Plant Profile
Shigeru Miki coined the genus Metasequoia in 1941 after studying Cretaceous and Tertiary fossils from Japan and Manchuria, noting that they matched neither the living redwoods nor the swamp cypresses. After forester Wang Zhan collected material from the great Moudao tree, the Chinese botanist Hu recognised the specimens as Miki’s fossil genus and formally described the living species in 1946 with W.C. Cheng. An Arnold Arboretum expedition reached the Lichuan valleys in 1948 and shipped seed to arboreta across North America and Europe, so the tree that had survived in a handful of damp Chinese ravines was suddenly growing in botanic gardens on five continents.
The wild population remains tiny and fragmented, and conservation assessments treat the species as endangered in its native range. Most of the surviving wild trees grow around villages and stream banks rather than in untouched forest, which is exactly why the local people protected them for so long: they were sacred, useful and simply too grand to fell.
Tissue-culture protocols now exist for the species, and nurseries use them alongside softwood cuttings to multiply superior clones quickly, because wild seed is scarce and variable. Cultivars such as M. glyptostroboides ‘Emerald Feathers’, selected for dense, upright foliage, are routinely multiplied this way rather than from seed.
Use it as the central vertical accent of a large garden, lined along a drive, or planted in groups of three with wet-tolerant understorey such as iris and pickerelweed. The open winter silhouette of bare, reddish, fluted branches is handsome in its own right, and the fibrous bark peels in long strips on older trunks.
Science & Biotechnology
The needles are arranged in opposite pairs along each deciduous branchlet, a detail that separates dawn redwood at a glance from bald cypress, whose needles alternate. The soft, feather-like foliage emerges bright green and turns warm russet and copper before dropping with the shoot tips each autumn. Mature trunks develop buttresses at the base, and in consistently wet ground the tree produces knobby root knees, just as swamp cypresses do. Chromosome studies place the species at 2n=22. Small, round, stalked cones ripen in the first autumn, each scale bearing winged seeds.
Because the tree bridges the fossil and the living floras, its chemistry has been studied with unusual intensity. Analysis of the needles has reported biflavonoids such as amentoflavone and hinokiflavone, compounds with a long research history in conifers, along with ordinary flavonoid glycosides. Volatile-oil work on the foliage describes a terpene-rich profile, and crude needle extracts have been screened in laboratory assays for antimicrobial and antioxidant activity. None of this has produced a commercial product, but the species is a standard reference organism whenever researchers compare living Metasequoia chemistry with the extractives preserved in fossil wood.
Uses & Benefits
In the landscape the dawn redwood is a magnificent avenue, park and estate tree, tolerant of heavy clay and seasonally waterlogged soil that would kill most conifers. It also copes with ordinary urban conditions and makes a striking specimen beside a pond, where the buttresses and knees develop best. Give it full sun and room: young trees put on well over a metre of new wood in a season, and the broad pyramidal crown eventually dominates everything nearby.
Growing from Seed
Gather cones as they brown in autumn and dry them until the scales part, then clean out the winged seeds. A short period of cold, moist storage before sowing evens out emergence. Sow in spring on a firm mix of loam, leaf mould and coarse sand, pressing the seed onto the surface and covering it with no more than a dusting of grit. Keep the tray evenly moist and shaded from hot sun until the seedlings stand upright.
Move seedlings into individual deep cells once they reach roughly ten to fifteen centimetres tall and carry several whorls of needles. Grow them on in full light, feed lightly, and set them out in their final position while small and vigorous, watering generously through the first season. Drought-stressed trees attract spider mites, and stressed bark can develop cankers, so steady moisture is the best pest control available.
Our Take
We regard dawn redwood as the most rewarding conifer a wet-soil gardener can raise from seed, and we pair it with its two closest living relatives: the endangered Chinese swamp cypress Glyptostrobus pensilis and the familiar bald cypress. For gardeners who want a truly monumental conifer on drier ground, our giant sequoia seed is the natural companion.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Dawn Redwood often pair it with these related subjects: