The Dawn Redwood by the Pond
How do I find it? You can recognise it by a trunk base that flares into deep vertical folds and buttresses, with bark in long fibrous strips, standing at the pond at the southern end of the park. In winter it is the tall bare conifer.
This species was known only from fossils until 1944. A Chinese forester found living dawn redwoods in Hubei, seed went round the world's botanic gardens from 1948, and almost every large specimen in Europe is one of that first generation. This one is about 70 years old, which for a tree on this site makes it among the youngest here and by some distance the fastest. In seventy years it has put on 5.8 metres of girth and 28 metres of height, which is more than the cedar managed in two hundred. The base is the part worth walking to: it flares out into deep vertical folds and buttresses, gnarled in a way that reads as far older than the tree is, and the bark runs in long fibrous strips up a trunk that tapers hard. It is a conifer that drops its needles, so it turns foxy orange in November and stands bare through winter. Come in autumn and it is the brightest thing at the south end of the park.
- Species
- Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)
- Girth
- 5.8 m
- Location
- Southern end of the park, by the pond, Schlosspark, Bad Homburg vor der Hohe, 61348 Hessen, Germany (Schlosspark, southern end)
- Access
- Free. The Schlosspark is a Hessian state park, open to walk through with no gate and no ticket; the palace buildings themselves are ticketed.
- Getting there
- Bad Homburg station is roughly 25 minutes from Frankfurt on the S5, and the Schlosspark is about a ten-minute walk from there.
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Sources
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