Wooster Garden Festival: Dawn Redwoods

'Living Fossils' Will Intrigue Wooster Garden Festival Visitors

There is a small valley only 10 miles long in the Sichuan Province of China, about 50 miles southwest of the Yangtze River. It can be reached by following a barely visible footpath over the steep terrain of a mountain pass.

There isn't much to see in this isolated valley -- only a tiny village known as Motaochi. It's composed of a few humble huts and what appears to be a shrine situated at the base of a large tree.

In 1941, a Chinese forester known as Kan came upon this forgotten village, discovering the shrine and a tree he had never seen before. Winter weather prevented Kan from taking leaf samples, but another forester returned to collect specimens three years later. Harvard botanist Elmer Drew Merrill had seen fossils of Metasequoia glyptostroboides, or Dawn Redwood, but no actual tree had ever been found until Kan's discovery.

The Metasequoia, or Dawn Redwood, is a cousin of Sequoia sempervirens, California's Coast Redwood. Metasequoias, now referred to as "living fossils," were common over 100 million years ago.

In 1948, Merrill, director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, germinated seed samples taken from the mysterious Metasequoia. Merrill distributed these seeds to all of the major botanical gardens in Europe and North America, including Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, Ohio. The 85-acre research arboretum is located on the Wooster campus of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. Dr. Diller, curator at the time, received one of the first packets. Today, a stand of more than 30 Dawn Redwoods can be found growing in the arboretum.

Wooster resident Burney Huff, a retired physician, has been cultivating his own interests in Dawn Redwoods for almost two years. "Metasequoia seeds from the orginal Dawn Redwood were given to Secrest Arboretum by Merrill in 1948," Huff said. "Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Diller, there are more than 50 Dawn Redwoods now growing in and around Wayne County -- all originating from the seeds in that initial packet."

Huff's passion for the Dawn Redwood began during a class reunion at Duke University's Medical School. While touring Duke Gardens, he saw a very unusual tree. He later found out it was a Dawn Redwood, one of the originals planted with seeds from the tree in China's "forgotten valley."

Since his first impression, Huff's Metasequoia-mania has inspired him to plant several Dawn Redwoods around Wooster. And he knows the exact location of all of the originals.

Anyone can view Secrest Arboretum's Dawn Redwoods. The grounds are open to the public from dawn until dusk every day of the week. And visitors to the 1999 Wooster Garden Festival, July 1617, will also see the arboretum's Dawn Redwoods -- in addition to those growing around Wooster.

The "Celebration of Trees" van tour will carry visitors from the grounds to several Dawn Redwood sites on the OARDC campus, College of Wooster campus, and additional sites within the city. Huff and Secrest Arboretum curator Ken Cochran will lead and narrate the tours, discussing the history of each tree, how it came to be planted in each location, and by whom.

Anyone with a Dawn Redwood tree on their property is encouraged to contact the arboretum at (330) 263-3761. Cochran and Huff would be interested in seeing your specimen.

Admission to the Wooster Garden Festival is free and open to the public. There will be a wide range of tours, displays and demonstrations, all of them related to plants and gardening. Hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. both days. OARDC's Wooster campus is at 1680 Madison Ave., just south of U.S. 30. For more information, call (330) 263-3700.

Written by: Jennifer Kiko, Communications and Technology, OARDC, (330) 202-3503.