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by joecool1029 922 days ago
Tried to respond to this before maybe the site will let me now. There's a redwood that was thought to be extinct that thrives in east coast conditions of the US. The dawn redwood is a fast grower, and while being the smallest of the redwood species is still quite a large tree. It was discovered in a valley in China I guess back in the 40's, previously only known to the fossil record.

We have one here planted in the 1970's that towers over my house and had one next to my childhood home. It's amazing they do as well as they do, but the concern now is genetic bottleneck since most of the seeds planted worldwide were from a few trees, so the successive generations I guess don't do as well as the ones in that valley do.
1 comments
redavni 922 days ago
Wow fascinating. Apparently it is a deciduous tree.
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joecool1029 922 days ago
It is. Just finished dropping its leaves/needles for the winter. I've heard from a few arborists they've had people ask if their tree needed to be cut down thinking it was dead, only to be told that's just what it does in the fall (it drops later than most of the other trees). We couldn't ID the one by my old house when I was a kid (internet was still early, nothing like inaturalist). Thought it was a larch, which having seen the tree now makes sense. I have been wondering after the recent HN topic if it has similar fire resistance/recovery that the giant redwoods out west have, realize we don't really know how long it'll live in the here since all were brought in the past 80 years. When the landlord planted it he misjudged how big it would grow (seems to be a common theme with the ones I see growing around). Until we got cats these red squirrels would eat the seeds in the small cones it produces and chuck them at our roof.

Other than the squirrel issue I have that was resolved, the tree is a lovely tree and I have had many dreams of them and memories of sitting in the shade under them with my cat as a kid. It doesn't throw sap like a fir does and the branches are thinner and unlikely to cause major damage to a house if they do come down.

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