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Metasequoia Glyptostroboides, Dawn Redwood

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Metasequoia Glyptostroboides, Dawn Redwood Of interest this week at Beal... Dawn Redwood Metasequoia glyptostroboides Family: the Redwood family, Taxodiaceae Also called Chinese water fir W. J. Beal Botanical Garden The Dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, has certainly one of the most noteworthy histories, both in geological time, and in its human-contact history. It has survived to our time since the late Cretaceous period, the last third of the Mesozoic era. This species is in fact one of a handful of extant plants that were known from fossils before they were noted in the present. There are so many excellent Dawn redwood fossil sites from the early Tertiary, the time after the Cretaceous and the dinosaurs, in the American West, that Metasequoia has been designated as Oregon’s official state fossil. In modern times, Dawn redwood was first noted in the winter of 1941 by Professor T. Kan of the Department of Forestry of the National Central University while traveling from Hupeh to Szechuan. He saw a giant tree the locals called a shui-sa, or water fir, but, as it was winter and it had no leaves, no collection was made. Professor Kan requested that the principal of the local agricultural high school collect specimens, but this apparently did not happen. In the summer of 1943 (or 1944 depending on the author) while on an expedition to Shen Nong Jia in northwestern Hubei, Chan Wang of the National Central Bureau of Forest Research became ill and took refuge at the Wan Xian Agricultural School and was told by the principal about a huge unknown tree, about 100 km away. He changed his plans and went there where he collected some branches and found some cones on the roof of a small temple nestled beneath the tree (new cones were out of reach). Eventually, specimens made it to W. C. Cheng and H. H. Hu who first recognized that this new species belonged to a genus recently (1941) described by Miki, from fossils, in Japan. Seeds were first collected in 1947 by W. C. Cheng who sent some to Dr. Merrill, of the Arnold Arboretum in 1948 (and simultaneously to Europe as well). Dr. Merrill sent them to some 76 institutions and botanists to found the North American population. In the late 1980s, the remnants of a mummified forest were found on Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian Arctic islands. This deposit of Eocene age (approximately 45 million years old) is mostly comprised of Dawn redwood forest debris from a time when the Arctic was The seeds of Dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, are winged for distribution by wind. Ascending to a height of at least 170 feet (52 meters) affords an excellent launching altitude for seed distribution in their native mountainous terrain in south central China. In warmer periods of Earth history, Dawn redwood was much more widely distributed in the northern hemisphere. much warmer and more moist. This treasure trove of ancient forest litter is not actually fossilized, just dried and slightly compressed. Some unthinking folks have actually burned some of the ancient logs as firewood. Since these islands have not moved far since Eocene times, these specimens demonstrate that a forest, accompanied by crocodilians and primates survived in a place that was in darkness for three months out of every year. Dawn redwood trees are robust and fast-growing. They can be acquired from nurseries and seem to flourish in our temperate climate again, after a break lasting millions of years..
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  • 1 Paleobotanical Proxies for Early Eocene Climates and Ecosystems in Northern North 2 America from Mid to High Latitudes 3 4 Christopher K
    https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2020-32 Preprint. Discussion started: 24 March 2020 c Author(s) 2020. CC BY 4.0 License. 1 Paleobotanical proxies for early Eocene climates and ecosystems in northern North 2 America from mid to high latitudes 3 4 Christopher K. West1, David R. Greenwood2, Tammo Reichgelt3, Alexander J. Lowe4, Janelle M. 5 Vachon2, and James F. Basinger1. 6 1 Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, 114 Science Place, Saskatoon, 7 Saskatchewan, S7N 5E2, Canada. 8 2 Dept. of Biology, Brandon University, 270-18th Street, Brandon, Manitoba R7A 6A9, Canada. 9 3 Department of Geosciences, University of Connecticut, Beach Hall, 354 Mansfield Rd #207, 10 Storrs, CT 06269, U.S.A. 11 4 Dept. of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1800, U.S.A. 12 13 Correspondence to: C.K West ([email protected]) 14 15 Abstract. Early Eocene climates were globally warm, with ice-free conditions at both poles. Early 16 Eocene polar landmasses supported extensive forest ecosystems of a primarily temperate biota, 17 but also with abundant thermophilic elements such as crocodilians, and mesothermic taxodioid 18 conifers and angiosperms. The globally warm early Eocene was punctuated by geologically brief 19 hyperthermals such as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), culminating in the 20 Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO), during which the range of thermophilic plants such as 21 palms extended into the Arctic. Climate models have struggled to reproduce early Eocene Arctic 22 warm winters and high precipitation, with models invoking a variety of mechanisms, from 23 atmospheric CO2 levels that are unsupported by proxy evidence, to the role of an enhanced 24 hydrological cycle to reproduce winters that experienced no direct solar energy input yet remained 25 wet and above freezing.
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