PlantFiles: Dawn Redwood
Metasequoia glyptostroboides

I LOVE Metasequoia Glyptostroboides (Dawn Redwood). Ok---so I bought 2 rooted cuttings on eBay and a sickly 7 foot tall specimen from a local nursery this summer. All are planted and thriving.

The saplings/ cuttings--which arrived looking like bare sticks, are heavily leafed and branching out...I jury-rigged a tomato cage and hardware cloth to protect from Rabbits---rabbits will eat the bark off these trees. Now the rooted cuttings are thriving and growing like crazy...they have grown a foot this summer alone.

The larger tree had almost no leaves when I bought it 2 1/2 months ago since it had been stored in the shade. I planted it, fertilized it with evergreen spikes, and watered it frequently... Now it is about a foot taller and heavily leafed with bright, dense, perky green leaves and it looks a LOT better than the new Baldcypress I planted, which is droopy and brownish, yet has received the same attention.

I highly recommend this fantastic tree. It has Upright, near columnar (perfect teardrop ) habit from the mature specimens I have seen.

I moved into my quirky home last May. Outside my bedroom window stands a 30 foot high tree that is the most beautiful visual and aural experience both summer and winter. It is only 20 foot from the house, but I am assured will not damage anything structurally. However, some of the lower limbs have been removed to allow light through to the next door garden and movement across the patio of mine. It still looks amazing and is home to many birds and now it is wonderful watching the birdlife flirting. It is the only plant I know that actually appears to 'sneeze' in the autumn and drop its foliage in about four doses. I love it!

I first learned of this tree when visiting the Raleigh Memorial Rose Garden, they have 3 that are over 50 feet tall.

I was there one day and was given a seedling about 4 years ago and now it is 8 feet tall. Since then I have collected the seeds and been some what successful in starting them from seed.

Right now I have 12 seedlings I am growing and I can't wait till this tree gets to 50 feet tall or more.

I planted a bare root twig last year...it has toped 10 feet by the end of its second summer. It is healthy and has a nice delicate foliage.

It is growing in the orange clay of north Texas with supplimental water from lawn sprinklers. Seems to tolerate the heat with no problems and is growing much healthier than my bald cypress.

We have a Dawn Redwood in our backyard at home...it's a beautiful tree that has withstood more drought and floods than we would have cared to throw at it. It also stayed standing while we received 3 feet of snow in one night, when many other "hardy winter trees" did not. It has grown about 10 feet since we moved in (3 years ago), so the growth has astounded us!
We look forward to many more years ahead with our beautiful tree.

I planted this tree in celebration of my nephew's birth. It has grown approximately 1 foot since April but I anticipate a more productive growth period this year since it is now fully established.

There is a nice specimen in Harwood, MD just north of Southern High School on Route 2 Solomons Island Road, The last house on the right before the High Tension Power lines. It is about 70-80 feet tall, so it must've been planted at least 40-50 years ago, making it one of the 1st ones planted in the USA since it was smuggled out of China.

This is a lovely specimen tree, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a spot open in their landscape. Keep in mind the tree does grow fast, even in adverse conditions. It will shed its leaves in winter and look positively dead, but come spring it will bud out again.
The tree is low maintenance - I never water or fertilize mine, and they do fine. Occasionally Japanese beetles will devour some of the tender growth, but only when nothing else (like roses or grapes!!) is available.
Do not limb this tree! Some people like to remove the lower brances, making the plant look like an upside down ice cream cone on a stick. This is a hideous practise and completely unnecessary. The dawn redwood is a spectacular plant when the branches reach right down to the ground, but looks silly when limbed.

Propagation via cuttings:

Take Hardwood cuttings that have undergone at least one month of complete Dormancy. Use a rooting hormone such as 'Dip and Grow' or 'Hormex #8' or 'Woods 1:10'. Bag the cuttings completely for one month with bottom heat. Remove the bag and keep the humidiy up around the cuttings. Many people are successful simply sticking their cuttings in a pot and placing a white plastic grocery bag over them and tying it off. Continue the constant bottom heat and you should have roots in ~4 months. (Dirr)

Grafting is another means as is from seed.

Just a warning....Tent Worms LOVE this tree! I have been fighting them for three years and had never had them before..

We were given a Dawn Redwood that was in a pot in May. It was very small. We put it in our yard and it grew over 2 feet in two months. We did have to put a fence around it because the rabbits were eating the bark off. The tree is a beautiful color of green, and dances when the wind blows.
We do water it a lot and it seems to grow overnight.

It surprises me how tolerant of standing water this tree is.
We planted one two years ago with little consideration for it's placement. It turns out that the area was virtually a wetlands, and frequently has an inch or more of standing water in it. It's doing great, where other trees have drowned.

This summer we saw another specimen in the Cornell University arboretum, and it was growing straight up out of a pond.
I'm not sure if this speaks to the tree's tolerance, or if it actually prefers environments like this.

The presence of the carpenter bees and the dropping branches makes me think it may only have been a matter of time anyway. Carpenter bees prefer dead wood for their homes, the tree's days were probably numbered, so don't feel too bad . What did you put in it's place for shade?

It broke my heart to take this tree down. Previous owners had built our deck around it and it is a very dirty tree for a living area. All year 'round it was dropping something. The leaves were always all over the deck, and didn't disappear on their own. The beautiful "acorns" are very hard on bare feet when the dry. It did not do well after our summer of drought, and was always dropping dead branches, and attracting nuisance, if harmless, carpenter bees.

The wood was gorgeous: we left the stump at seat level, and saved several other trunk "seats" for the deck.

There are many around town, and they are just spectacular in open spaces.

About 7 years ago my dad ordered 3 Dawn Redwood saplings. He gave the smallest one to me. I planted it in the center of my front yard. It is huge about 50 feet. It has an ideal location...full sun and a leach drain from under the house. Two years ago the leader was broken in a snow and ice storm. A new leader has developed and the tree is almost as tall as it was before the storm. We have just had our yard landscaped and the landscaper at Image of Green has put 3 uplights on the tree. It is simply beautiful all day and now at night. We can hardly wait to see it this winter after it looses its foliage. The lighting has added another aspect of facination and interest to the tree.

Tree does well in higher zones than listed- found a healthy, happy tree in Escondido, Southern California, zone 9b, bordering on 10a.

Grows rapidly with regular watering. Light textured plant, beautiful fall color. Needles are fine and rapidly vanish in the garden. Will tolerate heavy soils.

There is now a selected clone of this plant with golden foliage called Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Goldrush'. It makes a very attractive variation to the usual green of this tree and it is also less vigourous.

Metasequoia is a "living fossil". Until they found a population of this genus in China in this century, science only knew about Metasequoias because of fossil woods from the Cretaceous period. Having a living fossil in your yard IS. VERY. COOL.