June 12 - Trees from the Dinosaur Age

The images show Ann in front of trees called Dawn Redwoods. These are conifer trees that are deciduous. That is, they have cones but lose their needles in the fall.

Up to about 70 years ago, the normative view was that all such trees were extinct. However, a small grove of them was then discovered in China.

Since that time, seeds from these trees have been planted in several parts of the world. The National Arboretum has the largest grove of these trees in the Western Hemisphere.

Even though the trees are only about 70 years old, most of them are already over 150' high.

I like this quote from the wikipedia article on the Dawn Redwood (aka Metasequoia),


".. Metasequoia has experienced morphological stasis for the past 65 million years, meaning that the modern Metasequoia glyptostroboides is identical to its late Cretaceous ancestors".