The Forestry Research Area in Liliental

The Dawn Redwood

The Latin name of the dawn redwood is barely pronounceable: metasequoia glyptostroboides Hu et Cheng. It is a relative of the redwood and coast redwood. For a long time the species was thought to be extinct. The timber and needles were known only from fossil remains found in lignite deposits in many areas of the northern hemisphere. However, in 1944 botanists from the university of Nanking found living trees of this species in the border area of the middle Chinese provinces Szechwan and Hopeh. Two expeditions carried out in 1946 and 1947 with American support brought seed of the trees to Nanking, where samples were sent out to many botanical gardens around the world.

The trees in Liliental planted in 1961, were acquired by taking cuttings. The mother tree stands in the university of Stuttgart’s arboretum in Hohenheim (see map 16).