Today, Dawn Redwood, also called Early Redwood, can be found in Northwest botanic collections like the Gardens. Stand to the right of Kiosk 10 and look across the swamp/pond at our specimen, grown from a seed, the likes of which are now propagated
at many nurseries throughout the World. In 1947 a Chinese researcher distributed several pounds of seeds collected from a remote valley in China, from a few (1,000) lingering trees, discovered during WW II without much fanfare. Today, there are forests of these trees in China, the United Kingdom, and North Carolina. The Portland, Oregon Hoyt Arboretum’s 1948 tree produced the 1st cones in North America in 8 million years (Dawn Redwoods are found in fossilized rocks throughout the World). Walk the streets of Manhattan or DC and see these trees, noticeable because they lose their needles in the Autumn. Unlikely ever again to face extinction, illustrating that we humans hold the power to prevent extinctions. If we treated 200 – 300 of the Cascadia Floristic Region’s plants the same (those on the brink of extinction) the Gardens would gladly lose its mission. We add the Dawn Redwood to our list of Cascadia native species, 903 goes to 904. Less than 300,000 plants have actually been identified worldwide. Kew suggests 40% face extinction today. If every Region said “No” to extinction, it would be zero percent. Ours is a good place to start, one species at a time.
https://www.britannica.com/plant/dawn-redwood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasequoia_glyptostroboides
http://www.burkemuseum.org/research-and-collections/botany-and-herbarium/collections/database/results.php?Genus=Metasequoia&Species=glyptostroboides&SourcePage=search.php&IncludeSynonyms=Y&SortBy=DESC&SortOrder=Year
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Kiosk-10.pdf
This “sequoia” was discovered in 1944 in the Country of:
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