What is special about the towering tree at the entrance to the Yale Peabody Museum?
Commonly known as a Dawn Redwood—Metasequoia glyptostroboides—this member of the cypress family (Cupressaceae) is actually a “living fossil” and a close relative of the California redwood. Once known only from fossils and thought to be extinct, in the 1940s these trees were discovered growing in remote valleys of central China. Through the collaborative efforts of Chinese and American scientists, seeds from these trees were planted worldwide. The tree at the Peabody is from one of these seeds.
This stately conifer (cone-bearing tree) has a long history that stretches into the Age of Dinosaurs and once flourished over vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere, dominating the vegetation of Arctic latitudes for some 35 million years.
In 1941, in the midst of World War II, Japanese paleobotanist Shigeru Miki first coined the name Metasequoia for a common but perplexing fossil species. Then in July 1943 Chan Wang, a scientist with China’s National Bureau of Forest Research at Chongqing, discovered a tree growing in the town of Moudao in central China that seemed to be brand new to science. Five years later the Chinese botanist H. H. Hu finally recognized that Wang’s tree was the same as Miki’s fossil tree.
This discovery immediately captured the imagination of both scientists and the public. Dawn Redwood seeds were soon distributed worldwide. Cultivation and conservation have increased the chance of its survival, but the Dawn Redwood is still very rare in the wild. Much needs to be done to ensure its continued existence in its natural habitats.
For more on the history and research of the Dawn Redwood, see on Metasequoia: Back from the Brink? An Update, Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History 48(2), October 2007, at BioOne Complete.