Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) Family: CUPRESSACEAE
The two Dawn Redwood trees on the Florida State campus are near the Starbucks and the new
health center. They are easily mis-identified as bald cypress. Dawn redwood shares the deciduous habit and buttressed roots that bald cypress but it is more closely related to the redwoods (genus
Sequoia). The genus
Metasequoia was first described as a fossil from the
Mesozoic Era (more than 68 million years ago) by
Shigeru Miki in 1941, but soon after this a living representative, this species
Metasequoia glyptostroboides, was found and described from a few small forests in China just after the second world war. Since then the plant has been planted worldwide and is not an uncommon ornamental tree. A large forest has been established and seedling grow wild in North Carolina but the tree has not established a wild population in Florida yet.
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| Dawn Redwood leaves. |
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| Dawn Redwood foliage |
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| Dawn Redwood trees near the new health and wellness center on FSU campus. |
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| Bark and fruit of Dawn Redwood |
