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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
It was an odd looking thing and an unlikely purchase for two practical-minded seniors. It was also expensive, and we were warned that, because it was a tree, it might not survive our winter if planted in a pot. Despite all that, home it came – and into a pot, a very large pot, it went.
Officially, it’s metasequoia glyptostroboides, the dawn redwood, and it’s a living fossil. Its existence in our world speaks to a scale of time that’s difficult to comprehend. According to the fossil record, its ancestors emerged on the scene around 150 million years ago, and while it’s related to the more familiar giant redwoods of the west coast, it is the sole survivor of its specific genus.
Until a grove of these trees was discovered in central China at the end of the Second World War, it was thought to be extinct. To put its emergence on planet earth into perspective, our own homo genus didn’t appear until about three million years ago. Of course, we knew none of this at the time of our purchase.
For four years now, our dawn redwood has been content in its pot, and its unique appearance has won it a place of prominence amongst the menagerie of plants on our front porch. I can gauge its growth by comparing where my line of site falls on a point across the street.
That growth is constrained by the size of its container, but in my reading I learned that in normal conditions, it grows quickly to an impressive height. It won’t ever match its west coast cousins, but will be as tall as most any tree we see in the city.
Being porch people, we get lots of drop-in visits, and a neighbour on one occasion told us she had seen a mature tree that reminded her of ours only a few blocks from us. She had been curious enough to ask about the tree, and as you may have guessed, it was a dawn redwood.
Armed with a location and with camera in hand, we were standing in front of that tree not 15 minutes later. I’d prepared myself for one of those “is that all there is” moments, but this experience was anything but.
We immediately felt we were in the presence of something ancient: a life form that had rubbed shoulders with the early denizens of those swampy landscapes, conjuring up images from our science books, complete with the dinosaurs that dominated our world at that time.
Our tree would look very much at home in those captivating dioramas, and the fossil record tells us that it was really there! And to be here today, virtually unchanged from its original form, it had to survive multiple life-ending climatic changes, including the great upending that did for the dinosaurs and most every other life form that existed back then.
From a distance, you would think the dawn redwood unremarkable. It’s only when you stand in front of its distinctive trunk that you start to appreciate its differentness.
The girth of its reddish-brown coloured base seems out of proportion to its height, giving the tree a squat appearance. That solid moisture-sucking base probably contributed to its longevity but, whatever the case, it’s eye catching and the first thing you notice about the tree.
Bulging muscle-like ridges rise from the base giving one the impression that multiple smaller trunks have melded into one as the tree grew. The soft-needled, fern-like foliage suggests it’s an evergreen like its western relatives, but the dawn redwood is actually deciduous, and before it loses them, its fronds turn a lacklustre rusty-bronze colour.
As impressive as the trunk is, the real show is this tree’s branch structure. Botanists describe its branches as having “arm pits.” To me, they look like they were an afterthought, as if the trunk grew without them and they were added later – very strange. If you’re old enough to remember the Doctor Who TV series, you would be reminded of his nemesis, the dastardly Daleks with their cone-shaped lower bodies and horizontal broom-handle arms.
We’ve now discovered six of these trees within a few kilometres of our home, which made me curious about their total number here in Burlington, Ont. The answer to that question was provided by a very helpful member of our city’s forestry department. Of the 88,000 it counts as city trees, only 75 are dawn redwoods.
I’ve started to think about my responsibility to ensure our little time traveller’s future. With proper care, it will surely be here long after I’m gone, and provisions will have to be made for it to have a permanent home. Perhaps it will become a memorial tree for us and in doing so provide some tiny bit of the longevity for our family that its ancestors have enjoyed for many eons now.
Gary Parker lives in Burlington, Ont.