Metasequoia Glyptostroboides

The dawn redwood is a fast-growing, endangered deciduous conifer and the only living species of the genus Metasequoia, shedding its needles seasonally unlike its evergreen redwood relatives and reaching about 51 meters in height, making it the shortest of the redwoods. It survives in the wild only in wet lower slopes and mountain river and stream valleys along the border of Hubei and Hunan provinces and Chongqing municipality in south-central China, with populations concentrated in Lichuan county, Hubei. The genus was first identified from fossils in 1941 by paleobotanist Shigeru Miki, who believed it extinct, but living trees were found in central China around the same time, and the connection between fossil and living trees was confirmed in 1946; seeds collected in 1947 were distributed to arboreta worldwide, making it a celebrated living fossil.