Described as a "living fossil," it is an ancient relative of the giant Sequoia and Coast Redwood of California. With small compound leaflets arranged along closely branching twigs, this species resembles these two west coast species, as well as the Eastern Hemlock. This deciduous conifer looks like the baldcypress of the Southeast, but grows faster and tolerates a wider range of soils and climates.

The species was unknown until 1941, when Japanese palaeo-botanist Shigeru Miki peered in a microscope to notice some odd fossils from America labeled "sequoia" (coast redwood) and "taxodium" (swamp cypress). But the paired leaves were alternate, not opposite, as in the swamp cypress. Miki published an article claiming he had found a new fossil genus, and named it "metasequoia," meaning 'like the sequoia.'

Initially, the species was believed extinct, since no living specimens were known, and the fossils were 1.5 to 6 million years old. But that same year, 3000 miles away, a young man called T. Kan in the Red Army partisans led by Mao retreating from Japanese invaders, went to look for firewood in Mo-tao-chi, a small remote village in western Hubei province close to the Yangtse in eastern Sichuan. A forester by training, Kan was puzzled by an old conifer by the village temple. Villagers called it "water fir." The tree was deciduous, so Kan asked the local schoolmaster to send him leaf specimens in the spring. Specimens were sent—and lost.

Finally, in 1946, specimens did reach Professor Hu, head of a Beijing botanical institute, who read Miki's 1941 article. Professor Hu concluded this was Miki's metasequoia, alive three million years after it had died out in the rest of the world. He named it "glyptostroboides," meaning "like a glyptostrobus"—the Chinese swamp cypress. Later, a whole forest of Dawn Redwoods was discovered 30 miles away in The Valley of the Tiger, near Shui-se-pa.

In 1946, the Chinese economy was so poor no one in Beijing could pay a collector to gather seeds from the newly discovered tree. But in 1947, for the paltry sum of $250, American botanists from Arnold Arboretum at Harvard sponsored a Chinese expedition to Mo-tao-chi. In January 1948, seeds were sent to Harvard and botanical gardens all over the world. The next year Mao's Red Army took over China, the bamboo curtain came down, and Chinese botany was cutoff from the West for nearly 30 years. From the old tree at Mo-tao-chi, hundreds of thousands of young trees were propagated and planted in Europe and North America—regions where it grew three million years before.

Seeds sent to Harvard were propagated into seedlings that were distributed to selected institutions and individuals around America. Today, the Dawn Redwood is becoming popular in America, and can be ordered from many tree sellers, including Arbor Day Foundation.

This tremendous Dawn Redwood tree is growing in an abandoned industrial site alongside Owasco Creek at the western edge of the small city of Auburn in the eastern Finger Lakes.

To display their pride in their magnificent tree, .

The Dawn Redwood was . For more on this, see:

The Dawn Redwood was . For more on this, see:

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TERRA: The Earth Restoration and Reforestation Alliance — www.championtrees.org — updated 8/1/2004