The Glasnevin Dawn Redwood

Until 1941, botanists knew the dawn redwood only from fossils, certain a conifer that shed its needles every winter had gone extinct millions of years earlier. Then living trees turned up in a valley in Sichuan, China, and seed from the first Western collecting expeditions went out to major botanic gardens worldwide by the late 1940s, ending the species' presumed extinction in real time rather than in a museum case. Glasnevin's specimen sits in that plausible window: the Tree Council of Ireland's 2009 heritage survey puts it at 50 to 100 years old then, which works out to roughly 65 to 115 now, consistent with descent from that original wave of seed, though no source confirms this exact tree's planting date or lineage. Metasequoia glyptostroboides is deciduous, unlike almost every other conifer, its feathery needles turning a rusty bronze each autumn before dropping, a habit that startles visitors expecting a fir or a pine to stay green all winter. It is a single-source find, register only, an honest gap rather than a padded one. Find it in the National Botanic Gardens, a short walk from Addison's Walk's yew avenue and this cluster's other exceptional specimens, one of the closest things botany has to a resurrection story growing quietly in a Dublin garden bed.