![metasequoia fossil metasequoia fossil](https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/12f7df2e68e7256585f081ba6eb9325e/zon-3551651.jpg)
And I think that extra care might be reasonable, though explaining why is a philosophical challenge. (Lorax, step aside!) There’s a sense in which I care more about the tree because it’s a living fossil, or because of what I know about the past. I reckon I would work to protect that tree with indignation and gusto, in a way that I would never do for a run-of-the mill red maple. Suppose that a proposed expansion of the student center would require cutting down the metasequoia.
![metasequoia fossil metasequoia fossil](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/a1cAAOSwLxNg39HK/s-l300.jpg)
Most of all though, knowing that dinosaurs likely stood under trees just like this one drastically changes our aesthetic experience of the tree. Then there is also the joy of sharing with students some knowledge about a tree that many of them walk past every day. First of all, the tree itself is beautiful and stately, and quite unlike the hemlocks and hardwoods of Connecticut. I can’t speak for any of my students, but for me it was kind of a special moment, aesthetically speaking. There, right next to a sidewalk between student center and the library, is an elegant metasequoia - a “dawn redwood.” We visited the tree to pay homage to a living fossil.Īfter having spent a couple of weeks reading and discussing papers about dinosaurs, I just had to show the students a tree that is, morphologically, barely distinguishable from trees that that flourished during the late Cretaceous and-in utter disregard of asteroids and/or cataclysmic volcanism-on into the Paleocene and Eocene. We walked out across the road, past the student center. Take a look at the previous trees we've taken a closer look at here or read our 'First day of spring' blog here.A couple of weeks ago, I made a spontaneous decision to take the first-year students in my class on “The Meaning of Dinosaurs” on a ten-minute field trip to a special place in the Connecticut College Arboretum. We hope you're enjoying our tree of the month series. It is classed as an endangered species in the wild. However, in the native habitat in China the number of living trees is estimated to be around 5,400, with many scattered populations of low or no regeneration. Today, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, is a wide spread tree species, used in the horticulture and landscape industry in the temperate climate, with few garden cultivars available. These three trees were received in 1990, wild collected from different populations in China and are valuable for preserving the genetic diversity of the endangered species. Beside the one mentioned above, other precious specimens can be found by their tree numbers: 130528, 130530, 130531 on Arboretum Explorer. This would mean Kew must have grown this from the first batch of seeds that left China in 1948.Īt Westonbirt you can find 16 specimens of dawn redwood.
![metasequoia fossil metasequoia fossil](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/branches-dawn-redwood-metasequoia-glyptostroboides-tree-living-fossil-was-discovered-china-inaccessible-90780131.jpg)
From records, Westonbirt received this tree as a young seedling/plant in 1950 from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Westonbirt’s Plant Record Officer, Alison, pointed out to me that our Metasequoia (tree number 240051, in the Savill Glade) is most likely to be one from this introduction. The first introduction of dawn redwood outside of China was through the Arnold Arboretum in the USA in 1948 when, with the Chinese botanists, up to several kilograms of seeds were collected in the wild and distributed for growth trials to Chinese institutions the Arnold Arboretum, Missouri Botanic Garden, and elsewhere in the United States botanic gardens at Kew, Edinburgh, and other locations in the United Kingdom. It was a few years later, in 1944, when living specimens of this, thought to be an exciting new species, were found in the Hubei province in China. It is one of five deciduous conifer genera of conifers as is, in my view the most spectacular in the autumn when the deciduous needles start turning russet-brown with tints of coppery pink.ĭawn redwood was first discovered in 1941 as a fossil of a tree that first appeared during the Mesozoic Era (the age of the dinosaurs approximately 250 to 65 million years ago). The species name ‘ glyptostroboides’ refers to its physical resemblance with another conifer – Glyptostrobus or Chinese swamp cypress. The word sequoia means 'coniferous tree' while from Greek, meta- means ‘changed’, therefore Metasequoia translates to a changed or transformed coniferous tree, such as coastal redwood.
![metasequoia fossil metasequoia fossil](https://statesymbolsusa.org/sites/statesymbolsusa.org/files/primary-images/dawnredwood2.jpg)
The Latin name can tell us much about the appearance of this species of tree. It is the dawn redwood ( Metasequoia glyptostroboides). Today we will have a closer look at another of the ‘living fossils’ we grow at Westonbirt. Michal Dvorak (Westonbirt Arboretum Forestry England Dendrologist)