Botanists had a name for this species before anyone had seen one alive. Metasequoia glyptostroboides was known from fossils and assumed extinct until living trees were found in central China in the 1940s, which is why it gets called a living fossil and why arboretums everywhere wanted one. This one grows in the northern section of the Dominion Arboretum, and the National Capital Commission's register singles it out as one of the few conifers that loses its needles in the fall. That is the thing worth timing a visit around: a tree that reads as an evergreen all summer turns, drops its foliage and stands bare through an Ottawa winter. The register says the species can reach 35 metres and three metres through where conditions favour it; in this climate the Friends of the Central Experimental Farm put the Arboretum's specimens nearer 25. One honest warning before you walk out there. The Friends' CelebriTrees tour lists three dawn redwoods on these grounds, one on Heart Island and two in this northern section, one of them the 'Jade Prince' cultivar. The register entry carries no tree number to match against theirs, so the tree at this pin may be one of those or a fourth nobody has catalogued. No age, planting date or girth is recorded anywhere. If you know when it went in, tell us.
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Getting there
Dominion Arboretum, Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa, ON (northern section of the Arboretum)
You can recognise it by the needles: it is a conifer that turns and drops them in autumn. It stands in the northern section of the Arboretum, where two more dawn redwoods grow, one of them the 'Jade Prince'.
About a 10-15 minute walk from Dow's Lake, where the Century Willow and Turn-of-the-Century Linden (ott_013, ott_014) stand at the south end of Queen Elizabeth Driveway; OC Transpo stops serve Prince of Wales Drive and Carling Avenue at the farm's edges.
Autumn colour
late October into November, when the needles turn reddish brown before they fall
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: National Capital Commission
- National Capital Commission (NCC), 'A Living Legacy: Remarkable Trees of Canada's Capital' (objectid 51, NCC 'A Living Legacy')
- friendsofthefarm.ca