The First Dawn Redwoods of Finch Arboretum

Botanists knew this tree from fossils before they knew it was alive. Metasequoia was described from imprints in rock, and everyone assumed that was the end of it, until a living stand turned up in a valley in central China in 1943. A species filed under extinct was still quietly growing. Seed went out to institutions around the world, and in the 1950s the John A. Finch Arboretum received three of the first dawn redwoods brought to North America. Two are still standing. At about seventy-five years old they are infants by redwood standards, and they are also most of the species' history on this continent. What makes them worth the walk is visible without knowing any of it. Dawn redwood is a deciduous conifer, which is close to a contradiction: soft feathery needles all summer, rust orange in late autumn, then bare all winter while every evergreen around it carries on as normal. The trunks flute deeply as they age, with vertical channels running down between the branches. The arboretum is free and sits in west Spokane. These two stand a short walk from the state champion willow, so it is one afternoon rather than two trips. Nobody has recorded a girth for either of them; if you have a tape measure, we would take the number.