The Dawn Redwood of the Public Garden

Until 1944 this species was known only from fossils and assumed to have been extinct for millions of years. Then living Metasequoia turned up in Sichuan, and in early 1948 the first seeds to leave China arrived at Harvard's Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain, a few miles from where this tree stands, just ahead of the door closing on scientific exchange with China for decades. The Arboretum raised seedlings and sent them around the world. This one was planted in the Public Garden in 1963, one of four here. It is not old, and it is not pretending to be. At about 63 it earns its place on what it is rather than how long it has stood. Dawn redwood is a deciduous conifer, which most people meet for the first time in autumn, when a tree that plainly looks like a redwood turns foxy orange and drops every needle it has. The trunk is fluted and deeply hollowed under each branch, another oddity of the species, and a younger 'Gold Rush' cultivar stands across the path for comparison. One note on sourcing: the 1963 planting date and the exact placement come from the Friends of the Public Garden, whose own people care for the tree, and we found no record of this specimen independent of them.