After 1944 seeds from this tree were brought to Europe and North America and they were grown both in tree collections, for the purpose of preservation, as well as ornamentally. This use is what preserved the small populations which still exist in China. The dawn redwood has a long history of use as an ornamental plant, even before the discovery that it was the same species as found in fossils. Like many other conifers the leaves of this species are reduced into large numbers of needles. This species is also monecious with male and female cones appearing on the same plant, and use wind dispersal for pollination. Strangely for a conifer this species is deciduous, its needles turning reddish-brown and dropping off during the fall. The young bark is reddish-brown darkening to grey as it ages and is fissured in long vertical strips. Metasequoia glyptostroboides is an interesting tree morphologically as well as historically, this coniferous tree can grow over 50 meters tall and 2 meters wide. Due to the small population size and distribution of the Dawn Redwood this species is classified as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. These relic populations are extremely small and only exist as the trees were used locally as ornamental plants. It is now grown in Europe and North America for preservation purposes as well as an ornamental tree, however the native region consists of only a few small populations in the Sichuan, Hubei, and Hunan provinces in China. After this discovery was made seeds were collected and sent to tree collections around the world. This discovery was the result of the attempt to classify a group of large unknown trees. The first living dawn redwood trees were found near the Yangtze river in China in 1944. glyptostroboides was a dominant and widespread member of deciduous forests in higher latitudes. The fossil evidence suggests that at one point M. glyptostroboides fossils were found in western Canada and date from the Cenomanian period of the Late Cretaceous, roughly 100 million years ago. This large conifer is an interesting example of a living fossil, having first been described from fossils found throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Metasequoia glyptostroboides, commonly known as the dawn redwood, is a member of the Cupressaceae family, along with juniper and red cedar.
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