The Dawn Redwood 

Family: Taxodiaceae
Range: Western China

Thought to have been extinct for over 5 million years, this ‘living fossil’ at the Garden was the first Dawn Redwood to be planted in Britain after its chance discovery in a remote Chinese village in 1941.

Now commonly known as the Dawn Redwood, the first Metasequoia glyptostroboides to grow in Great Britain since the dinosaurs dominated the flora in the Mesozoic era, was planted in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden in 1949.  This stunning tree now stands nearly 22 metres tall and has been judged one of the ‘Fifty Great British Trees for Fifty Great Years’ by the conservation charity the Tree Council as a tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in her Golden Jubilee year.

To help find these outstanding trees – one for every year of the Queen’s reign – the Tree Council turned first to the local tree enthusiasts who make up its country-wide National Grid Tree Warden Scheme.  Tree Wardens and others who joined in the search for Great British Trees came up with hundreds of nominations from which the final selection of 50 was made.

The chance discovery of the Dawn Redwood was one of the most exciting events in the plant world of the last century and the story of its resurrection and introduction is quite amazing.  In early winter 1941, T Kan, a forester from the National Central University stumbled upon a strange new tree growing in a tiny village in Szechuan, China.  Over the next five years, specimens were ‘lost in the post’ or proved inconclusive and China was torn by war, making expeditions impossible. 

However, Professor Cheng of the National Central University, Beijing, was determined to establish the strange tree’s identity, and finally sent an expedition to the remote Szechuan village in 1946 to collect a complete suite of specimens.  After consultation with China’s leading tree experts, the Dawn Redwood was proclaimed to belong to the genus Metasequoia, hitherto only known from fossil evidence dating back 100 million years, and thought to have been extinct for 5 million years. 

Seed of the ‘new’ tree was collected on the second expedition, in 1947, which was sponsored by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University in Boston, USA.  The first consignment reached the Arnold Arboretum in January 1948 and was distributed amongst botanic gardens worldwide for cultivation.  However, the seed from which the specimen at Cambridge University Botanic Garden was grown came directly from a Dr Silow who worked with the British Council in Beijing.  This head start allowed Cambridge University Botanic Garden to be the first to plant out a Dawn Redwood on British soil. 

The Dawn Redwood is now a familiar sight in parks and gardens throughout the UK.  A fast-growing deciduous conifer, the specimen at Cambridge was 2.5m tall at the time of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II to the throne, 17 metres by the time of the Silver Jubilee in 1977 and is now approaching 22 metres for the Golden Jubilee. It prefers a damp habitat, and the Cambridge tree is grown by the Lake’s edge to compensate for the low rainfall in the Eastern Region.  Its strong pyramidal silhouette in winter, the fresh spring foliage and good autumn colour make the Dawn Redwood a strong contender for year-round interest in the garden.

Sadly, in nature, the Dawn Redwood is now restricted to just a few small and scattered stands in Hubei and Szechuan.  The species is classified by the World Conservation Union as ‘critically endangered’ due to intensive rice cultivation and the poor prospect for regeneration in the wild.

The young tree with the Director, John Gilmour in 1955

Cambridge University Botanic Garden, 1 Brookside, Cambridge, CB2 1JE. Tel: +44 (0)1223 336265 Fax: +44 (0)1223 336278 Email: enquiries@botanic.cam.ac.uk