TEMUKA DOMAIN
See if you can find the Metasequoia, or Dawn Redwood, planted by Temuka High School to commemorate the coronation of Elizabeth II 1953.
This deciduous tree is the ancestor of all present evergreen sequoia trees. Only 9 genera and 15 species exist today. Dawn redwood was one of those known only as a fossil until 1941, when it was discovered growing in a remote valley in Hupeh Province near Szechwan, China over an area only 1.5 km wide and 25 km long. Seeds were collected by the Arnold Arboretum in 1947, and the species has been distributed worldwide.
- It is a genus of fast-growing deciduous trees, one of three species of conifers known as redwoods.
- This ancient tree knew the dinosaurs! When dinosaurs roamed the earth, it is believed that trees in the Redwood family were very abundant.
- Has small, round 1/2" to 1" cones. It starts out with a pyramidal shape in youth, and matures into a more rounded crown. The bright green, feathery leaves turn orange-brown or reddish-brown in the fall.
- Grows 50 metres tall and 3.3 metres diameter.
- Grows at a fast rate, with height increases of more than 24" per year.
- Along with the larches, and swamp cypress it is one of the few deciduous conifers
- It belongs, together with all the other redwoods, to the family Cupressaceae and is the only living member of the genus
It was first known only as fossils from the late Cretaceous period, 136 million years ago, found in Japan and Korea in 1941. Then in 1944 herbarium specimens were collected from living trees in China but could not be identified. It was a year later, when the specimen was sent to an institute of biology in Beijing, that it was recognised as the same species as the fossils. In 1948 the species was formally described and named as Metasequoia glyptostroboides.
News of its discovery caused a sensation within the botanical community around the world and more than three hundred research papers have been published on this species, in which there is still considerable interest see www.metasequoia.org
A number of trees in New Zealand were established from seed sent from Dehra Dun in May 1949.
