Amherst Arbor Spotlight: Dawn Redwood

by The Amherst Public Shade Tree Committee

This is the second in a series of 12 articles produced by the Amherst Public Shade Tree Committee (APSTC) under the title “Amherst Arbor Spotlight.” The series focuses on the town’s 12 species of shade trees and features a different tree each month. New articles will be posted on the first day of the month on the APSTC website, and in the Amherst Indy, with links on Facebook, Instagram. 

Dawn Redwood: Metasequoia glyptostroboides

“A living fossil”

One of a few deciduous conifers, the dawn redwood’s feathery foliage changes from bright green in spring to a russet bronze in the fall before dropping its needles in winter. While all evergreens drop their needles every three-to-five years, the dawn redwood does it every year (likely an evolutionary response to ancient environmental conditions). The dawn redwood has a sturdy trunk with red-brown peeling bark and a broad circumference of buttressed roots. Disease and pest free, it can grow over 100 feet tall. 

Plant fossils indicate that dawn redwoods were once widespread across the Northern Hemisphere, but it was believed they became extinct millions of years ago. Then, in 1941, a Chinese botanist discovered a stand of dawn redwoods growing deep in a Hubei Province forest of central China. News of this “living fossil” attracted enthusiastic attention from botanists around the world. In 1947, scientists from the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University funded an expedition to China, where they collected large quantities of seeds and distributed them to colleges and botanical gardens. Those dawn redwoods and their descendants now grow successfully in the United States and around the world.

In Amherst, two beautiful dawn redwoods flank the entrance to the Goodwin Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at 41 Woodside Avenue. The cornerstone of the building is engraved “1910 A.M.E. Church,” several decades before the remarkable discovery in China. Since these two dawn redwoods are not cited in the 1975 publication Trees of Amherst, they were likely planted postdate. Their significant height is testament to the dawn redwood’s rapid growth. 

Dawn redwoods are similar in appearance to bald cypresses–both are deciduous conifers that drop their needles annually–but can be distinguished by their leaf arrangement: opposite on dawn redwoods, alternating on bald cypresses.

More dawn redwoods are coming! Thanks to a generous donation from Northampton’s Urban Forestry Commission, APSTC has 20 dawn redwood saplings growing in its tree nursery on Station Road. Committee members will eventually plant these trees throughout town to bring cooling shade and other environmental benefits to Amherst residents.