- Metasequoia glyptostroboides
- China, Szetschuan Province (discovered in 1941)
Genus
Metasequoia: The name is derived from the Greek word meta and means after or beyond; it also means: transformation of an organism; this indicates that the tree was originally only known from fossils, i.e. a living fossil. After it was found in Hu-Peh (Hubei) in China in 1941, it quickly became widespread.
It is a deciduous conifer whose needles fall off including the last shoot (similar to the bald cypress Taxodium distichum); an exotically striking, large-crowned tree with a straight trunk and conical crown, up to 40 meters high and 10 meters wide. Since its discovery in 1941, it has spread rapidly by seed throughout the world as a popular park tree.
Information on the species
The species name glyptostroboides comes from the Greek words glyptos (= notched) and strobus (= spinning top). This refers to the cone scales.
Needles: fresh green, later copper-brown, shedding on the last shoot, up to 20 millimetres long. The primeval sequoia can be confused with the bald cypress. A clear difference, however, is the alternation of needles on the bald cypress.
Flowers: monoecious; male flowers in catkin-like spikes, up to ten centimetres long, tiny; female flowers: yellow-green, drooping at the end, up to six millimetres long
Fruits: spherical, dark brown, hanging up to 2.5 centimetres long
Bark, bark: light orange, reddish-brown, exfoliating, later furrowed, peeling off in strips, cracked; heavily notched at nodes (from the Latin word nodus = knot; meaning the branch base on the trunk); in contrast to the similar bald cypress with a smooth, cracked trunk
Characteristics: frost-hardy, resistant to urban climates, tolerates flooding