After three hours of sleep, we board a morning train from Chongqing to Lichuan, a county-level city in Hubei. We had worried that traveling at the tail end of Chinese New Year could mean fighting through crowds, but our high-speed train is half-empty. As the train moves into the countryside, the scenery becomes increasingly rural, and winter becomes increasingly apparent. I take photos and short videos of farming villages wedged between snow-capped mountains. I thought I would sleep on the train, but my excitement keeps me wide awake. I am on my way to see the type tree of Metasequoia glyptostroboides, or dawn redwood—the first-identified specimen of a “living fossil” once thought extinct. And I have convinced two friends to join me: Gabriele de Seta and Dino Zhang, both ethnographers who study digital media. Neither of these friends knew about Metasequoia a month ago, but I’ve done my best to tell them why it’s a special tree.

On the train to Lichuan, home to the China Metasequoia Botanic Garden. Photographs courtesy of the author

The first Metasequoia I saw, consciously, was at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario. My mum, a landscape architect, suggested the visit as a safe outdoor activity, as we were experiencing the first waves of COVID. We worked our way through the rock garden and some perennial beds, and then we reached the tree. My mum told me its common name, “dawn redwood,” and explained that it is a “living fossil,” once thought to be extinct, but then rediscovered. Immediately intrigued by the story, I spent some time looking at the tree, examining its straight, powerful looking red-brown trunk, fluted at its base and marked by knurls where thick lateral branches protruded at nearly right-angles. I crept beneath its branches to the trunk and looked up.

From that moment, I became a staunch advocate for the tree, telling friends and family about its interesting history and features. I spend some time every winter in Toronto collecting seeds from local trees planted in city parks. I’ve distributed some of these seeds to fellow Toronto Master Gardeners, to see if any of them have luck germinating it successfully (as for my own attempts with germination, out of hundreds of seeds I’ve managed to rear only a handful of saplings, now planted out of the city on a property by Lake Ontario). I’ve joined an ever-expanding online community of metasequoia-enthusiasts, in the “Metasequoia Geeks” Facebook group run by Alabama-based grower Jared Fager. In this online space, we trade germination guides, pruning tips, and of course endless photos of special specimens seen in parks and gardens. Member include arborists, scientists, landscapers, and people who just love the look of the tree.

My two friends Gabriele and Dino, being anthropologists and always up for some field research, were easily swayed by my pitch to make an informal field trip to the first specimen: the type-tree, specimen As ethnographers, I figured, we could go not only for my personal interest in the tree, but to do some preliminary research on how the tree exists as a cultural landmark or tourist attraction.

Now, as I stare out the window, I listen to a podcast about the “discovery” of the tree. I have already listened to this episode, but I want to review the details: which paleobotanist made the initial fossil discovery; which botanists made the subsequent rediscovery of living trees; and which scientists brought seeds back to the US. Hearing this story again makes me even more excited. And as we approach Lichuan City, I start seeing groves of trees that look a lot like Metasequoia. As it is winter, the trees, being deciduous conifers, are bare, and skeletal. Some of them are near streams, some are near houses and farms. I wonder: are these groves “wild,” or planted by locals? After being initially impressed by the train’s top speed of 190km/h, I now wish we would slow down so I could get a better look at them.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides was first described in fossil form by Japanese Paleobotanist Shigeru Miki (1941), who was able to distinguish the plant from both Sequoia and Taxodium, thus establishing a new genus.1 In the next five years, through the combined efforts of Professor H. H. Hu, Wan-Chun Cheng, and foresters from China’s Central Bureau of Forest Research, living populations were discovered and identified in Hubei Province.2 Based on his 1948 expedition to Lichuan, J. Linsley Gressit (1953) described the tree as being in a state of “semicultivation,” as locals moved volunteer seedlings to their farmlands. Transplanted trees would be used to predict the success of rice harvests, as good cone production on the trees was believed to correlate with rice production nearby. In 1947, seeds were sent to the Arnold Arboretum. The story of the Arnold and the story of Metasequoia are now forever interlinked, as it served as the first landing point for the tree outside of China. This relationship is memorialized in the Arboretum’s logo: an illustration of a dawn redwood. For further reading on the history of this relationship (as well as the tree itself), the best source is the Arboretum’s 1998-99 special issue of Arnoldia, Metasequoia after Fifty Years, which compiles selected papers from the discoverers of the tree, and modern botanical and paleo-botanical assessments of the tree. It also includes a republication of the announcement of the tree’s arrival at Arnold Arboretum by E. D. Merrill, director of the Arboretum from 1935–1936.3

Lichuan and the Metasequoia Botanical Garden are situated in western Hubei province
in the heart of China. Map by Kyle Port (see note 4 for sources).

In this announcement, originally published in 1948, Merrill outlines the Arnold Arboretum’s role in the tree’s rediscovery and distribution. Early in the paper, Merrill makes sure to mention that Dr. H. H. Hu was himself trained at the Arboretum, and that Professor Cheng “writes that without the modest grant made by the Arnold Arboretum, it would have been impossible for his representative to make the trip” to collect samples from the tree. He writes “the Arnold Arboretum has made an important contribution, working through its Chinese associates, in thus being involved in an attempt to preserve a remarkable conifer, and a species that in its native habitat is apparently not far from the verge of extinction.”5

The story of the Arnold and the story of Metasequoia are now forever interlinked, as it served as the first landing point for the
tree outside of China.

Since those early years, the continued survival of the dawn redwood in nature has been a focus of continuing scholarship. The tree remains endangered in the wild (IUCN); the native range of the tree remains limited, and is threatened by climate change.6 Natural regeneration is exceedingly rare,7 and though the tree has become numerous, its genetic variation in cultivated populations is lower than that of its wild populations.8 As the tree has become both a focal point for conservation attention and national mythos, a park, the Chinese Metasequoia Botanical Garden, has been created in Moudou in Lichuan, Hubei province, to showcase the type-tree first identified by Hu and Cheng.

After two hours on the train, we arrive in Lichuan City. Outside the train station, we find a large public map of the surrounding area. The featured tourist attractions seem to be scenic mountain views and vast caves, which are numerous in this region. Block text to the side of the map reads “Cool Lichuan’’ in English, proclaiming it “the famous cultural city in Western China,” “the most beautiful China eco-tourism destination city,” and a “cool city in China.” A local man in a black coat is hanging out by the sign and points us to the exact location of the tree. His price to drive us to the tree and other local attractions is 300RMB for the day, which we accept. We follow the man to his car, a black Chevy hatchback, and settle in for a 40-minute drive. He drives very quickly and swerves around several cars in maneuvers I would never attempt. Dino remarks on the empty buildings around Lichuan City. Many apartments and office buildings are either under construction, completed but empty, or closed. We drive through mountain tunnels, each filled with fog and exhaust fumes. There seems to be no ventilation in the tunnels. After passing through two or three long tunnels, we arrive at the small village of Moudou (formerly known as Modaoxi or Modaoqi, which is how it is named in online maps), and cruise along its main street. The village reminds me of Canadian small towns in its layout of two-story businesses and homes all shoulder-to-shoulder along the road.

The road widens, and our driver stops, and tells us we’ve arrived, and that he will wait in the car. I climb out of the hatchback onto the road, feeling a bit wobbly on my feet from lack of sleep. Facing us at the entrance of the park is a line of trees, all metasequoia, about ten meters tall, and a series of small bridges over a stream. And there, over the bridge, and past the smaller trees, is Specimen 0001. My fatigue vanishes, replaced by a surge of adrenaline. I am loopy with joy. I turn to my friends, who I’d recruited to come on this long, winding journey. They seem happy and curious, though perhaps not as excited as I am. Our phones are out, and we snap pictures and take videos. I take selfies with Specimen 0001. I stare in wonder at the tree and remark on its various features, the classic lateral branching, but also some peculiar, curved branches, which I’ve not seen on other dawn redwoods. Specimen 0001 is adorned with Chinese New Year decor, and appears to have candles and incense that was burnt near its base. Later, I spot tangerines by the base of the tree, left as offerings. These fruits symbolize wealth and abundance during the Chinese New Year.

Henry Lee Heinonen posing with a humanoid Metasequoia mascot.

I ask Gabriele to take a photo of me with what appears to be the Metasequoia Biodiversity Park Official Mascot. The character is a little humanoid, of ambiguous gender, with a big round head and white gloves. On its head it sports the unmistakable stem of Metasequoia glyptostroboides: oppositely arranged leaflets with rounded tips. We see a green version of the humanoid, and an orange version. Dino theorizes that they are a couple, one male, and one female. I theorize that the green mascot represents the leaflets in spring and summer, and the red mascot represents the leaflets in autumn, as they dry on the tree. We later encounter a yellow version of the mascot, however, which undercuts our dualistic theories. I later discovered much more about the mascot’s identity, as I report in a later section of this paper.

I stare in wonder at the tree and remark on its various features, the classic lateral branching, but also some peculiar, curved branches, which I’ve not seen on other dawn redwoods.

The type-tree, Specimen 0001, originally discovered in the 1940s, is now the site of a park, about 400 square meters in size (enough space for an hour of walking around at a leisurely pace). A park was originally proposed in the 1940s by a Kuomintang government committee, but was canceled due to the civil war.9 The current park, 中国水杉植物园, or Chinese Metasequoia Botanical Garden, began its construction in the year 2000, with a cost of approximately 5.1 million yuan (then 614,500 U.S. dollars).10 The initial construction forced the displacement of “some 20 households.”11 The shrine that once existed right by the base of Specimen 0001 (visible in photos from early expeditions) was removed by the 1980 Sino-American Botanical Expedition.12 In 1980, the tree was “now surrounded by rice paddies and [a] small, ditched stream.”13 By the time of the park’s completion, the rice paddies were no more. Tourist photos from the last two decades, available online, show that the current artificial pond with fountains, in 2011, was a natural pond where ducks swam and people went fishing.

Specimen 0001 has undergone some changes, too. Within the past ten years, a boardwalk surrounding the tree was removed. The current enclosure is a wooden fence, the perimeter of which, judging from photos, is at least double the distance from the tree compared with the previous fencing. From a photo, I can see that at the time of the 1980 Sino-American Botanical Expedition, there was text in Chinese painted directly on the tree trunk, reading “Lichuan County Tree Number One.”14 Later, the text was replaced with a simple white sign reading “0001 Metasequoia type specimen tree.” Sometime in the past eight years, the white sign has been replaced with a brown sign, which blends into the natural colour of the bark but contains the same text. And sometime in the last decade, a new blue sign was affixed to its trunk, on the other side from the brown sign. The blue sign displays a QR code directing to a website listing Specimen 0001’s height, age, and other statistics. In almost every photo of Specimen 0001 there are red ribbons strung up on the tree by local worshippers, the kind used to mark a hong bao tree (a wishing tree, or money tree, where during Chinese New Year, red ribbons, representing wishes for good fortune are placed on the branches).15 I imagine the tree has received ribbons and offerings for a very long time. Now, there is a metal post near the entrance of the park with CCTV cameras pointed at the tree. Are worshippers who step over the short wooden fence surveilled? And by whom?

The Metasequoia type tree in a drawing given to the Archives of the Arnold Arboretum by H. H. Hu, showing the shrine that once stood alongside the tree.

By mindlessly posting photos of the tree on social media on the day of my visit, I’ve added to the digital repository through which changes to the park and Specimen 0001 can be tracked. Now, when I do a Google image search for “metasequoia specimen 0001,” my own photo is the top result. The newest addition to the digital archive shows the type tree and its immediate surroundings as a subject of veneration and care, embraced by a large red sash, adorned with red lanterns. Out of view: a QR code, and CCTV cameras. The tree, which for hundreds of years could only be seen in person, is now digitally archived, rendered visible from any smartphone in the world. For a fossil, Metasequoia has changed quite a bit in the past century. Specimen 0001, first an object of worship, became an object of scientific inquiry, an object of surveillance, a tourist attraction, a mascot, and a national symbol. This is clearly a very adaptable tree. We come across a large flat area with a planting of maybe 40 trees, all metasequoia, which I estimate to be in their teens, with ornamental underplantings of sedge and grasses. Again, we encounter our mascot friend beaming at us, not only in 3D statue-form, but also on signs promoting exercise. There are indeed several local aunties and grannies using the park for exercise, doing multiple rounds of the park in a small group while chatting. I see no other foreigners. There are three statues in this area of the park, busts of middle-aged men. They each have a plaque, but the plaques are covered in snow. I try to brush it off with my ungloved hand, but the writing underneath is worn and hard to read. I am left to assume that at least one of the figures (one of the two wearing glasses) is Professor Hu. The others are likely Professor Hsieh and Professor Cheng. Across from the Professors there is a fenced-off section, with a collapsed, rusty steel structure inside—perhaps this had a tent over-top of it at some point. A sign explains that this is a university research area, with teams working there since 2017. There are metasequoia seedlings planted in other fenced off research areas nearby. These sections contain thousands of metasequoia, some tagged showing planting dates around 2018.

Specimen 0001, first an object of worship, became an object of scientific inquiry, an object of surveillance, a tourist attraction, a mascot, and a national symbol. This is clearly a very adaptable tree.

Back by the entrance, we again stop by Specimen 0001. We watch a woman who has hopped the fence around the tree and is kneeling by its base. She lights candles and incense. When she has finished, she returns to the path and to her husband, who has been waiting for her. I try to start up a conversation in my very basic Mandarin. I tell them, awkwardly, that I “love” the tree. The woman does not want to speak with us and keeps walking, but her husband stops briefly. He is smoking a pipe with a towering pile of tobacco in it. I ask, again awkwardly, if they love the tree, too (my Mandarin is very limited). He does not hesitate and responds loudly and with a smile: “we love it!” He then tells us that the old tree “is an ancient thing, and ancient things protect us, so we make offerings to it.” His wife eyes us warily and beckons him from down the path, and he leaves us. The husband and wife seemed much more nervous about talking to us than being surveilled by the CCTV cameras.

A statue of Hsen Hsu Hu with his trademark round spectacles.

Seeing the type tree adorned with lanterns and a red sash, and seeing locals make offerings, I am left to wonder what its importance is, culturally or spiritually: what do locals think about the tree? Here, the literature is lacking. Hong (1999) notes that metasequoia are worshiped to “bring the family good luck (nowadays translated into prosperity) and bless their children with healthy bodies and bright minds”,16 and other scholars note a shrine built at the base of Specimen 0001.17 But these are minor observations, and after eight decades there exists no in-depth research into the cultural importance of the dawn redwood. My own short interaction with locals worshipping the tree left me with more questions than it answered: are other large dawn redwoods venerated similarly? Do offerings change according to seasonality? The woman giving offerings had to hop over a fence to get to the tree—is local worship at odds with the park’s mandate or operations? What is the story of the removal of the shrine between the 1950s and 1980? Long-term ethnographic research would be necessary to properly understand local beliefs about metasequoia.

If we are not currently able to analyze Metasequoia as an entity in folk religion specifically, we can still analyze the tree as a local and national symbol more generally. As Yuheng Zhang argues, nationally, the tree has been useful for the Chinese state and the creation of its mythology.18 Its ancient past is used as a parallel and augmentation of China’s own long cultural history, and its discovery by a team of Chinese rather than foreign botanists is a point of national pride.19 The park, notably, is 中国水杉植物园, Chinese Metasequoia Botanical Garden. 中国水杉, Zhongguo Shuishan, or Chinese metasequoia, is a common name used for Metasequoia, which contains the adjective “Chinese” “… only to emphasize its perceived ‘Chineseness’ and the link to the Chinese national identity,” as “the tree exists only in China, and in the Chinese language the name shuishan is reserved for this genus alone.”20 Busts of the statues of Chinese scientists are featured in the park, with no mention of Shigeru Miki or any American scientists (at least in the English plaques). The international and collaborative aspects of Metasequoia’s early rediscovery (as well as its prehistoric global reach as a species) are occluded in favor of a more nationalist and triumphalist narrative.

Seeing the type tree adorned with lanterns and a red sash, and seeing locals make offerings, I am left to wonder what its importance is, culturally or spiritually: what do locals think about the tree?

Back in the park, the three statues and emphasis on the Chinese actors and aspects of the species’ rediscovery could support Zhang’s (2019) observation that the rediscovery narrative was used to prove the “development of science in China and highlight one big step towards modernity.”21 Zhang continues, “Chinese citizens, by associating with this iconic species, gain a psycho-emotional experience, a new appreciation of time and space, and thus the assurance of China’s place in the world.”22 The discovery of this tree is indeed an important moment for Chinese science and China as a modern nation. It was primarily discovered by Chinese, rather than Western scientists. These Chinese scientists trained as modern botanists in modern institutions, and were properly credited with their discovery of the Metasequoia.23 Nonetheless, Chinese Metasequoia Botanical Garden is a continuation of the ongoing nation-building process facilitated by the tree, as described by Zhang. The large, engraved stone by Specimen 0001 gives a brief overview of its discovery, natural history, and dimensions. It also makes mention of Deng Xiaoping, who made mention of the tree as “that tree on the edge of the Yangtze River,” tying the site into a larger national history. Deng Xiaoping made use of he tree as a distinctly Chinese symbol during his leadership, planting a metasequoia in Nepal with Prime Minister Kirti Nidhi Bista during a historic 1978 visit.24 Deng and Zhou Enlai are also reported to have “presented metasequoia seeds as precious gifts to other countries.”25

There is at least one anecdotal account online which indicates a hybridity of local folk understandings of the tree and its national symbolism. An anonymous writer recounts their 2004 encounter with a local elderly man of Moudou who claims that the tree lost a branch when Mao Zedong died, and another large branch fell when Deng Xiaoping died. These events, suggests the writer, add to the local understanding of it as a “sacred” tree.26 Interestingly, the nationalist Metasequoia narrative coalesces with some non-Chinese conservationist plans for the protection of the tree. Gaytha A. Langlois, in “A Conservation Plan for Metasequoia in China,” writes that the species “needs to be marketed as a Chinese national treasure.”27 The tree is “an intrinsic part of China’s natural heritage,” Langlois argues, and “thus important to all citizens in the nation.”28 Langlois further imagines villagers as potential “eco-guides” who will provide tourists with “local lore” and “natural history observations.”29 Their participation in such a program, Langlois predicts, could “develop a sense of identity with the protected M. glyptostroboides forests”30 amongst local citizens.

The discovery of this tree is indeed an important moment for Chinese science and China as a modern nation.

This sense of local identity in relation to the tree does seem to exist, at least on an official level. Hubei’s provincial capital, Wuhan, has selected the Metasequoia as the “City Tree.”31 More locally, the symbolic reach of Metasequoia has extended to the entire county of Lichuan: consider the friendly metasequoia-mascot I encountered by Specimen 0001. I now know that the metasequoia-mascot is named “杉 杉” (shān shān), derived from the Chinese word for Metasequoia, 水杉 (shuˇıshān, translated literally to “water fir”). The mascot, created by Pan Wenjun in 2016, appears not only in the park, but in other promotional Lichuan County material: signs in the urban areas, and even in a 2018 campaign alongside other mascots showcasing Lichuan’s global exports. According to China Lichuan Net News, the “cute and friendly image” of 杉杉 is meant to reflect the “hospitality, openness and tolerance of the people of Lichuan.”32 In one article promoting tourism to Lichuan, 杉杉 is described perfectly, in the website’s English translation, as the “Metasequoia Elf.” 杉杉 is a locally created entity who functions as an advocate of Lichuan and wedges itself neatly into the Chinese Metasequoia Botanical Garden, smiling and waving at tourists. While the park features the nationally ubiquitous Core Socialist Values on stone engravings, 杉杉 provides a much softer official messaging. In one sign, 杉杉 proclaims that exercise can promote good health and reduce illness. In other signs throughout the paths, 杉杉 beams over a distance marker telling joggers and walkers how many meters they’ve travelled so far. Outside of the park, 杉杉 can be found in inflatable form, travelling to nearby cities like Wuhan to promote Lichuan as a tourist destination.33 杉杉 is a gentle and cute authority, operating similarly to Japanese kawaii aesthetics used by organizations to “endear themselves to stakeholders; to make their message content simpler and engaging; and in the case of impersonal or authority-wielding institutions, to soften their image.”34 This type of Japanese-inspired mascot is now popular in China (see the five 2008 Olympic mascots, four of which represented cute anthropomorphic versions of animals found in China). I found myself endeared almost immediately—my first reaction upon meeting 杉杉 was to take selfies with it. 杉杉 is also marketable: I found myself wishing I could take some 杉杉 souvenir home with me, but there was no gift shop at the park. I have since found photo evidence online that 杉 杉-branded merchandise does exist. In 2020, Lichuan created promotional luggage tags, one featuring 杉杉, and another featuring a cartoon of a character in traditional clothing of the Tujia. Tujia are an ethnic minority in China, numbering around 8 million people, mostly residing in Hunan and Hubei provinces.”35 Tujia as a language has become endangered over time, with newer generations speaking mostly Mandarin.36 Now, Tujian cultural motifs have been thoroughly integrated into local tourism, with Tujia dance and traditional clothing featured heavily in promotional videos. In a romanticized narrative, the Tujia people, “living in harmony with nature,”37 are imagined to have protected the Metasequoia. Indeed, a traditional origin story of the Tujia people is that they are descendants of a pair of siblings who clung onto a great metasequoia tree for survival during a storm.38 This connection between the Tujia people and the species is a convenient one for Lichuan tourism, as it combines two “attractions” into one package that might capture the imagination of tourists (see photo of promotional luggage tags).

杉杉 with their siblings, all Lichuan agricultural products: a potato, red tea, a leafygreen water vegetable, and a root vegetable. From a promotional Lichuan video.

Digitally, 杉杉 has been a promotional figure for Lichuan. In one Lichuan promotional video, 杉杉, (appropriate, as Gabriele remarked, given the tree’s monoecious nature), speaks from a stage to a crowd of ecstatic global consumers about Lichuan’s booming export economy. 杉杉 translates their Potato-sibling’s Chinese speech into English for the crowd. 杉杉 encourages the other characters to go out into the world where they will be greeted as high-quality products. As the tree’s official anthropomorphic form and the most iconic natural symbol of Lichuan, 杉杉 acts as the ambassador and coordinator for global trade. In online media as in the park, 杉杉 is similarly able to operate as a local ambassador alongside more nationalist messaging. A video posted by Cultural Tourism Lichuan on ixigua, for “Praise to the Party and Welcome the State Day,” shows Cultural Tourism workers in a variety of Lichuan tourist destinations (excluding the Metasequoia Garden, unfortunately), wearing red shirts, wave Chinese flags, and sing the patriotic song “Ode to the Motherland.” And on their red shirts, over their hearts, is 杉杉.

As the world transforms, so too does the ancient tree.

The Enduring Myth of Metasequoia
Zhang’s (2019) aforementioned argument for the significance of the tree in Chinese national identity is convincing, but I am not a Chinese citizen, and nor are many of the other tourists who visit Specimen 0001. The story of Metasequoia is universally accessible, as it is not one story. For the Arnold Arboretum the tree represents institutional success—this was the
original destination of the first seed shipment out of China. Some of the first trees grown outside of China now reside at the Arboretum, now with massive and fluted trunks. It is also, as the Arboretum’s associate director of external relations and communications Jon Hetman, says, “a survivor.”39 Even groups unconnected to the original story of the tree’s discovery have adopted the dawn redwood as a symbol—one organization plants Metasequoia at former Holocaust sites in Ukraine.40 Their 2018 newsletter states that “[t]he story of survival and rebirth of metasequoias is incredible, paralleling the resilience of Jewish people and the rebirth of the Jewish life all over the world.”41 The dawn redwood is an underdog, endangered but making a global comeback, and its struggle makes for a compelling narrative.

In the 1940s, worship of Specimen 0001 took place at a physical shrine at its base. In 2024, worship takes place underneath a QR code, under the gaze of nearby CCTV cameras. Older expeditions to the tree were risky affairs, with local bandits hiding in the dark, and destinations unmarked on paper maps.42 In our expedition, a local driver was waiting by the train station, ready to take another hapless group of tourists to all the regular Lichuan hotspots for cash. Popular Western speculation and discourse around the tree used to take place in newspaper articles. Now it takes place in specialist Facebook groups. As the world transforms, so too does the ancient tree.


Acknowledgements: This article would not have been possible without Gabriele de Seta and Dino Zhang, who made the pilgrimage with me to Specimen 0001. Both of them helped me tremendously in planning and executing the trip to Lichuan, and in locating Chinese-language sources for my research. I would also like to thank Jared Fager, creator of the Metasequoia Geeks Facebook group, for teaching me and so many others about the cultivation and history of these incredible trees.


HENRY LEE HEINONEN is a landscaper, ethnographer, and musician living in Toronto. He is currently completing his horticultural training as a member of Toronto Master Gardeners.


NOTES

  1. S. Miki. 1941. “On the Change of Flora in Eastern Asia since Tertiary Period (I). The Clay or Lignite Beds Flora in Japan with Special Reference to the Pinus trifolia Beds in Central Hondo.” Japan Jour Bot 11:237–303.
  2. H. H. Hu, 1998. “How Metasequoia, the ‘Living Fossil,’ Was Discovered in China.” Metasequoia After Fifty Years (hereafter MAF). Arnoldia 58:4/59:1,: 4–7.
  3. Elmer D. Merrill. 1998. “Another ‘Living Fossil’ Comes to the Arnold Arboretum.” MAF, 17–19, 18.
  4. Data from Esri, Airbus DS, USGS, NGA, NASA, CGIAR, N Robinson, NCEAS, NLS, OS, NMA, Geodatastyrelsen, Rijkswaterstaat, Garmin International, Inc., GSA, Geoland, FEMA, Intermap, and the Arnold Arboretum GIS user community.
  5. Merrill. 1998. “Another ‘Living Fossil’ Comes to the Arnold Arboretum.” MAF, 18.
  6. Zhixia Zhao, Yue Wang, Zhenhua Zang, Shuyu Deng, Tianyuan Lan, Zongqiang Xie, Gaoming Xiong, Junqing Li, and Guozhen Shen. 2020. “Climate Warming Has Changed Phenology and Compressed the Climatically Suitable Habitat of Metasequoia glyptostroboides over the Last Half Century.” Global Ecology and Conservation 23 (September). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01140.
  7. Xiqun Wang, Lüyi Ma, Baoxiang Guo, Shenhou Fan, and Jianxi Tan. 2006. “Analysis of the Change in the Original Metasequoia glyptostroboides Population and Its Environment in Lichuan, Hubei from 1948 to 2003.” Frontiers of Forestry in China 1 (3): 285–91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11461-006-0032-6.
  8. Yuan-Yuan Li, Xiao-Yong Chen, Xin Zhang, Tian-Yi Wu, Hui-Ping Lu, and Yue-Wei Cai. 2005. “Genetic Differences between Wild and Artificial Populations of Metasequoia glyptostroboides: Implications for Species Recovery.” Conservation Biology 19 (1): 224–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00025.x.
  9. Yuheng Zhang. 2019. “‘The Panda of Plants’: The Discovery of Dawn Redwood and National Identity Construction in Modern China.” International Journal for History Culture and Modernity 7 (1): 271–300. https://doi.org/10.18352/hcm.557.
  10. “China to Build One-Tree Park.” Accessed October 31, 2024. http://en.people.cn/english/200004/25/eng20000425_39618.html.
  11. “China to Build One-Tree Park.” Accessed October 31, 2024. http://en.people.cn/english/200004/25eng20000425_39618.html.
  12. Bruce Bartholomew, David E. Boufford, and Stephen A. Spongberg. “Metasequoia glyptostroboides—Its Status in
    Central China in 1980.” MAF, 47–53.
  13. Bartholomew et al.
  14. Bartholomew et al.
  15. “Wishing Tree | Lan Su Chinese Garden.” n.d. Accessed October 29, 2024. https://lansugarden.org/things-to-do/
    ongoing-programs/the-chinese-wishing-tree.
  16. Yang Hong.“From Fossils to Molecules: The Metasequoia Take Continues.” MAF, 60–71.
  17. Chi-ju Hsueh. “Reminiscences of Collecting the Type Specimens of Metasequoia glyptostroboides.” MAF, 8–11. Ralph W. Chaney. ““As Remarkable as Discovering a Living Dinosaur:” Redwoods in China.” MAF, 23–27.
  18. Zhang. 2019. “The Panda of Plants” (hereafter PP) https://doi.org/10.18352/hcm.557.
  19. PP, 281.
  20. “The Living Fossil,” Arnold Arboretum, accessed October 31, 2024, https://arboretum.harvard.edu/plants/
    plant-exploration/the-living-fossil/.
  21. PP, 290.
  22. PP, 295.
  23. Nicholas K. Menzies. 2021. Ordering the Myriad Things: From Traditional Knowledge to Scientific Botany in China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 178.
  24. PP, 289.
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