Featured Plant

The dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is considered a living fossil. Having once been thought to be extinct, the species was discovered in China in the 1940s. A deciduous conifer, dawn redwoods are a striking year-round addition to the garden.

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Metasequoia glyptostroboides was found in the fossil record in 1941 by a Japanese paleobotanist, Shigeru Miki, who gave the genus its name and determined that the species had a wide distribution across the Northern Hemisphere millions of years ago. Around the same time a Chinese forester, Chan Wang, collected material from a tree in Sichuan Province believed to be Glyptostrobus pensilis, a fairly common tree in the region at the time. It wasn’t until this material was reviewed by botanists Wan-Chun Cheng and Hsen-Hen Hu, that it was determined to be a new species entirely. Soon after, the connection was made between the fossils and the living plants. Excitement for this discovery was high and seed collecting trips were undertaken to introduce the species into collections around the world. Seeds and seedlings from these collections were sent from the Arnold Arboretum and other institutions to botanic gardens and arboreta around the world and can still be seen in many of these collections. Today you can find dawn redwoods throughout the San Francisco Botanical Garden and the Japanese Tea Garden.